


Two To Tango

by LadyShockbox



Series: By Sparing Sazabi (Extended) [2]
Category: SD Gundam, SD Gundam Force
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Midquel, Original Characters - Freeform, Prequel, Side Story, by sparing sazabi, the only hetero presenting fiction you will ever wrench out of me, the shape of water but with a ROBOT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/pseuds/LadyShockbox
Summary: Part of the By Sparing Sazabi "extended" AU. When Professor Gerbera attempted to assassinate Sazabi in "The Fate of Commander Sazabi," he brought a squadron of Doga Bombers with him. TA-N90 was captured as the sole survivor of his flock and ultimately placed in the care of the first human willing to take him. Now Renee is beginning to wonder if that was really such a good idea... Explicit themes and scenes inbound, warnings will be posted when they become relevant chapter-by-chapter. Side-story branching from to TA-N90's chapter in "Craters."





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Craters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006419) by [LadyShockbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/pseuds/LadyShockbox). 



 

 

**i**

_**June 15th, 274 N.C.** _

 

Brandon Noble was going to  _die_.

In hindsight, her reaction might have been a little severe. Capture the flag was supposed to be a high intensity game anyways, and the extended recess for Bright Memorial Middle School made it more so. Summer vacation was on the horizon in less than three days. Wednesday might as well have been Friday. Final grades were submitted, and any “continued” curriculum was more meant to give parents a few last days of peace. The kids were wired after final exams to the point of delinquency. The playground was a zoo.

So when Brandon Noble snuck up on her and kicked her in the back while she guarded a group of “prisoners,” Renee Clarke went absolutely  _ballistic_.

The little snotfaced jerk deserved it, even if he was hardly  _little_  (he was fourteen and was built like a miniature boxer). Brandon had been tormenting her since elementary school. He taunted her from the back of the school bus on her first day after she changed districts, made fun of the way she danced by herself at the third-grade ice cream social, said her  _Stop Bots_ themed pajamas were dumb during the museum sleepover in May...

He was a jerk, but this was the first time he had  _touched_  her. Seven years of restrained anger rushed to the surface the second she got sand in her eyes. Reaching out for the closest object to her, Renee grabbed a rock the size of her fist and scrambled to her feet to shake off the playground grit. There was no time to stop and think. She was _angry_ and the rage needed to be _satisfied_. Brandon’s expression fell seconds before the impact.

She smashed him in the side of the head with all her strength. The tagged inmates she had been guarding froze in terror.

Brandon screamed and staggered. He held the side of his face. Through his fingers, she could see red. “What the hell is wrong with—!?”

Renee said nothing. The time for words, telling on teachers, or just sitting and  _taking_ the punishment had ended. Too much had boiled over to get her to this point. Between the early heat and the wild abandon of not having to deal with an extended in-school punishment, she shrieked and lunged with the rock again. Other kids yelled out seeing the attack. They were sheltered behind the crude “pirate ship” that the community put together two years earlier, made from recycled wood and car tires. It was shaped like a front part of a boat and everything, carving a V into the playground’s furthest field. Apart from being the perfect home base for capture the flag, it was a great spot for a secluded fight.

And boy oh  _boy_ was Renee itching to fight.

“I’m gonna  _kill_ you!” She swung with the rock again. Brandon skittered back out of the pirate ship’s cove towards the wooden slide next to it, finally drawing a proper crowd. Classmates and lower grade children peered down from the top of the slide and as far as the swings ten feet away. The radius of attention grew as more kids gathered at the foot of the pirate ship and rim of the running field. Renee gave pursuit. “STAND STILL!”

She flung the rock at him as hard as she could. Accuracy was sacrificed in favor of force, and it sailed into the tall grass without coming close to its target. Brandon laughed. Renee screeched and lunged with her hands extended. The larger boy didn’t have to expense any accuracy when his target was in close quarters. His closed his fist connected with her right cheekbone. She was knocked flat on her back in seconds, sand in her hair and getting down her shirt. Her face  _hurt_.

Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t cry. Not yet.  _Not yet...!_

A whistle blew somewhere far away. Was recess over, or had her battle cry carried the entire length of the playground? Adults were going to be alerted regardless. The fight had gone from a random spat to a boxing match.

“Brandon is beating up Renee!”

“Someone get Ms. Edmes!”

“Fight, fight, fight!”

Renee debated the pros of staying on her back. On one hand, Brandon would get what was coming to him. He’d be stuck on the tarmac for the rest of the school year, ever if there were only three days left. She would get to go home early, spend an hour in the principal’s office the next day crucifying Brandon for all the awful things he had done to her in the past, get a written apology from him—

“Awww, Renee’s gonna  _cry!”_  Goaded by the presence of his own injury, the boy must have felt compelled to start taunting her. He stomped over, leaning over her head and almost spitting in her face. His voice in her ears was too loud when he started to laugh. He started saying something else, but all she heard was static.

Renee debated the cons of getting up and  _kicking the ever-living shit out of him._ All at once, the pros of letting the grownups deal with Brandon were nowhere near satisfying enough.

Yeah.

Brandon Noble was going to  _fucking_  die.

She hauled ass as he started to pull away, drawing his foot back to kick her in the leg. Across the field, Renee could see two teachers starting to run for them. She still didn’t hesitate. Renee sprang onto the balls of her heels, pulling out of the way before Brandon’s sneaker could connect with her ankle. She rolled upward, grabbing his shoe as it swung past. Brandon shouted and immediately started to stagger backwards. She followed after him, pushing him down into the overgrown drainage ditch a few feet away. Crickets and other insects scattered. Mucky water from the thunderstorm the night before soaked through Brandon’s shirt, Renee’s shorts...

The boy shouted, catching her by the shoulder as she started  _wailing_ on him. He reached up to stop her, going to grab her face. “GET OFF OF ME, FREAK!”

At horse camp two years earlier, Renee had been walking a mare out to the corral for turnout. Renee liked horses, but it was a one-time gig and she never really considered going back. Lemon spooked at something and jerked the lead out of her hands at the last possible second, causing the end of the rope to whip upward and hit her in the eye. It  _hurt_ , but she was okay after getting some eyedrops. Now her eye hurt all over again. Brandon’s thumb was jammed against it as he grappled with her face, pressing  _hard._

Renee fell back as he flipped them over. Now she was pinned in the ditch. He jerked his hand to the side instead of just letting go.

Agony.

Renee shrieked, trying to roll away. It  _hurt_. It hurt worse than anything she had ever felt in her life up until this point and she finally started to cry. He still wouldn’t let go— or maybe he couldn’t. Brandon’s finger hooked  _deeper_ and tugged. Renee launched her hand up to clock him in the mouth. “ _LET GO!”_

Both children finally broke away from each other. Across the field, three – four – five teachers were now rushing towards them. Renee thought she recognized the assistant principle wildly waving her arms and blowing on her whistle, as if it would stop the warring children by sheer willpower alone. But it was hard to see.  _Really_ hard to see. Even pinned underneath her, making out Brandon’s face was difficult. He was crying, reaching up to cup his face where she had given him a bloody nose and split lip. His teeth were stained red.

Renee reached a hand up to rub her eye. It felt  _wrong_. Her vision was too dark. Her finger traced over her closed eyelid as she struggled to force it open. It felt too soft, too wet, coming back covered in blood and— what  _was_ that?  _Goop?_ She tried to feel her eyelid again. Another second went by before she figured out he eye wasn’t closed at all. Her eyelid blinked rapidly and kept bumping into her fingers, and she still couldn’t see them.

Oh.

Brandon Noble wasn’t going to die, now. Not with the teachers so close to saving him. But he was sure as hell  _going to wish he was._

Renee Clarke picked up the heaviest tree branch she could find, hidden in the tangled of tall grass. Bugs scattered from the indent it left behind in the mud. The pain she felt was masked by sheer, unrivalled rage. She hefted it high with shaking arms before bringing it down across Brandon Noble’s legs  _as hard as she could._

 

 

 

 

 

**12 YEARS LATER**

 

 

 

 

 

**ii**

_**June 15th, 286 N.C.** _

Renee Clarke, twenty-five and absolutely  _not having_  fun with it, saw police lights in her rear-view mirror halfway down the hill on Quess Road. Because why not. Of  _course_ she was going to get pulled over on her way back into the city after fighting with Nicole and Patrick.

“Great.” She turned on her directional and started to pull over. The radio started skipping in beat with the blinker. Side Seven’s classic rock hit _Psycoframe_ cut in and out with off-beat spasms. The check-engine light flickered to add insult to injury.  _”Fantastic!”_

Credit where it was due, her life wasn’t bad. Neotopia’s quality of living was better than it had ever been in recent years. She was still able to drive non-AI vehicles without demerits on her license, despite how much she felt she struggled with the vision test every time she went to renew. She had her own apartment, an awesome job, and decent credit allowance that let her put just enough food in her stomach: the rest was spent buying new parts for her truck. It wasn’t every day you got your hands on Old World tech like that. Her life was swell, all things considered. She was healthy and happy— mostly.

Visiting her parents in the outskirt suburbs might not have been a good idea in the long run. Quick family reunions to celebrate the beginning of summer were nice, but with her brother and sister constantly breathing down her neck... Renee made sure to get out of dodge when Nicole started up about the whole job situation. It was all fun and games before someone sad something that was only going to make her angry, or before Patrick asked her to try and not lose her  _other_ eye.

Renee put the truck in park, only briefly struggling with the stick shift (she was going to need to lubricate it or get _another_ replacement gear). She adjusted her eyepatch and checked the rear-view again. The cruiser pulled onto the shoulder behind her but not close enough for her to see into the cabin. Shit. She groaned miserably and turned the driver-side window crank. The window lowered. Cicadas screamed in the fields around them. Maybe it would be a new guy who’d let her off with a warning...

Her hopes were dashed when a familiar GM stepped out from the vehicle and started making his way towards her. His Ball partner was already rolling out of the passenger door ramp and trailing close behind. Oh no. God damn it.

Officer McCoy stepped next her door and waited. His arms were crossed.

Renee smiled. “Beautiful day we’re having, huh officer?”

“What’d you do wrong  _this_  time, lass,” McCoy said. It wasn’t a question. He was already unfolding his arms and reaching towards his belt, pulling out an equally familiar ticket pad. “I’ll wait while ye think it over.”

Renee chuckled weakly. “I left my parent’s place without working brake lights again?”

McCoy nodded. “And?”

“I didn’t install my muffler.”

_“And?”_

“And I didn’t— urgh, how bad is the damage?”

He was already writing the citation. “Bad enough that Boyo and I can’t look the other way, Ms. Clarke. Even if I wasn’t getting complaints about this cheerful orange menace on a regular basis…”

“Hey, she’s not a menace— she’s misunderstood! I was on my way to get the parts I need now.” She offered another sheepish grin, hoping she had enough charm to weasel her way to safety. “Is there  _anything_ I could do to get you to look the other way this time? Maybe?”

McCoy looked up at her and flashed his visor accusingly. “Is that a bribe, lass?”

“Oh god no! I just meant— look, I can’t have  _another_ strike on my license. I’m trying to restore Old War tech! You like history, right? You must have that old Earth accent programmed into your voice codec for a reason.”

McCoy didn’t look up. He was  _still_ writing. “I like history when it’s road safe.”

“She’s perfectly safe!” Renee slapped the steering wheel, as if this would prove how solid her trusted friend was. The horn went off and  _did not stop_  when she took her hand away. The check-engine light kept flashing. Her hazards came to life and the arrow on the speedometer ticked like a metronome.

McCoy gave the hood a slap. The horn stopped screaming in chorus with the now eerily quiet cicadas. “Yes.”

“I can fix that.”

McCoy was a pain to deal with, but the guy at least wasn’t  _completely_ heartless. He sighed, finally stopping mid-stroke with his pen. “Can you?”

“I’m trying  _really_ hard,” she admitted. Renee genuinely felt her spirit sink. “It’s not as easy as it looks. On one hand I could gut the whole thing and give it a whole modern overhaul, but then it wouldn’t be a genuine antique. Appearances aren’t everything. The stuff on the inside matters, too.”

“Especially when it works, lass.” McCoy sighed. “Driver’s license and vehicle registration, please.”

No escape. Renee sighed and handed them over. “Any way I can still convince you not to do this?”

“Ms. Renee, only a natural disaster could stop me from writing you up this ticket. I’m very sory.”

Renee groaned, turning away. Her chest knotted. Even if she  _had_ avoided getting demerits based on her vision, there was no escaping another set of points on her license for having an “unsafe” vehicle. She knew her truck better than anyone. Sure, it  _looked_ a little rickety, but she understood how it worked and knew if it was going to pose a threat. She looked straight ahead towards Neotopia, resigned to her face—

Huh.

_“Huh,”_ she said. “So... out of curiosity.  _How_ natural of a disaster are we talking about?”

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a trick question. Neotopia didn’t  _have_ natural disasters, beyond the occasional rogue snow storm or heavy rain. The weather modules in the atmosphere used for terraforming the planet more than two hundred years earlier made sure of that. However, bugs still sometimes put hiccups in the weather institute software. In stimulating seasons (something the planet was not able to do on its own), sometimes temperatures would drop too low or got too high. Minor flooding was always an issue in the spring, if the scientists running the modules themselves did their math wrong. Snow storms could dump far more snow than anyone wanted.

“The sky would have to be falling,” McCoy said.

“Oh. Cool.” Renee pointed straight ahead. “I got a close second for you. You might want to stop writing.”

McCoy finally followed her gaze. Neotopia’s impressive skyline was dotted with several well-known aircraft, including the Air Dinette blimp and some busses. The reach of Neotopia Tower’s twin pillars reached towards the clouds as the colony crown. At first glance there wasn’t anything out of place, if “first glance” lasted less than a fraction of a second. A new ship that Renee didn’t recognize, higher in the sky than all the others, was appearing out of scattered cloud cover. An insanely long cable rose from its frame and reached into the atmosphere, higher than even Neotopia Tower itself. The ship was wobbling mid-air. On top of it was a large… honestly, Renee didn’t know  _what_ it was. Green and Ugly As Shit was the only answer she had. What the hell even was it? Police sirens were firing off in the distance.

Boyo threw himself in reverse with a series of beeps, retreating to the cruiser. His treads threw dust.

McCoy shouted. He reached up and grabbed his head, dropping his ticket pad. The other hand still gripped Renee’s license and registration. He looked from the scene over Neotopia, to Boyo’s retreat, to Neotopia again. “Jumpin’ little—! What in blazes—!?”

Renee shuffled. “Do you need to go?”

“Don’t get any ideas, lass.” He quickly handed her necessary documents back. He never once bent down to get the ticket pad. It was long forgotten, anyways. “You go  _straight_ back to your folks’ place until we figure out what’s goin’ on. Your brother and sister will be happy to see you go back.”

“Sure,” she lied. It took a second for his words to sink in. Then she felt her face turn hot. “Wait. Did my  _siblings_ call you to complain about my truck?”

McCoy froze. “Uh.”

“OH MY GOD, THEY  _DID_ DIDN’T THEY?” THOSE SHITS.

There was an explosion. It cracked like a distant firework but there was no echo. It was punctuated with a series of other detonations. Renee looked back towards the city— and gripped her steering wheel. The flash of fading fire turned to black smoke on the surface of the cabled ship and the green flailing mass grappling it. Was... what  _was_ happening? Getting out of a ticket or not, the actual realization that something serious was going down...

The sirens of McCoy’s cruiser whopped to life behind her. Renee almost jerked clear out of her skin. The cruiser’s tires cut hard as the GM put metal to metal and sped back onto the main road. She caught a last glimpse of him as he went past. If he were human, he would have been white-knuckling the wheel too.

Renee stared straight ahead at the city. The cicadas were still quiet. Her radio had long since died. It was - almost - silent.

“If I was smart,” she muttered, watching as another explosion went off. It was very close to Neotopia tower. “I’d stay out of it.”

She restarted the engine. As she drove towards the city, she caught sight of McCoy’s ticket book still sitting abandoned on the side of the asphalt in her side-view mirror.

“But I’m not.”

**iii**

By the time she got back to the city, the chaos had died down. Officials were urging citizens that the danger had passed, and to be honest? Renee was a little disappointed. Mayor Gathermoon’s office insisted it was all part of the same movie they were filming in Peace Park a few months earlier, _The Blazing Samurai_. The poster was cool, but the trailer looked strangely low-quality for something being produced the Gathermoon administration. Rival politicians were still demanding to see the permits when night fell. _Then the_ _real_ disaster began.

It was a good thing she had the truck parked in her apartment complex’s garage, because the falling control horns would have pulverized _it to scrap._

Renee was inside the U-C Mart on the corner street by her apartment when the first brainwashed GMs stormed in and dragged off femme cashier. She didn’t dare leave after that. In fact, eight more people ended up taking refuge inside the store for the better part of the night. At one point she even saw McCoy run past the broken window towards downtown. He was chasing another GM with one of those awful machines gripped in his hand. The one stuck on his head held fast. Boyo was nowhere in sight.

It was four minutes to midnight when she saw one of _them_ up close for the first time. Not the possessed robots and the horned tech driving them insane— one of the flying robots. Taller than any GM and with a single red optic that lit the darkened store like a searchlight. It wasn’t any kind of robot designed on Neotopia. Renee hid behind the cashier’s counter with two other women her age and an elderly man who had lost his walker in the chaos. She chanced a look over her shoulder at the robot to get a better view. A head built like a shark, wings that supported turbines with enough kick to rip the store to pieces, too-wide wings even when they were tucked close to the alien’s body…

She was never going to forget the Dark Axis invasion, and she was never going to forget seeing her first Doga Bomber.

**iv**

_**June 16th, 286 N.C.** _

 

Nine hours after it started, the GMs returned to normal. The “Control Horns” were remotely deactivated by something called the Captain System, operated by a single robot with an entire secret organization behind him. The GMs wouldn’t stop whispering about it, exhausted by still _elated_ that they had a savior in their midst. Renee knew about the Brain World and how all the robots were linked through it, but the idea that someone – anyone – could just have total access and deactivate the Control Horns in one massive wave was mind boggling. It was the kind of engineering endeavour that she would have thought impossible.

Then again, it also seemed impossible when members of the Super Dimensional Guard stormed into the U-C Mart and rescued them. Since when did Neotopia have a secret militia?

Everyone was being evacuated out of the city for their own safety. Even though the invaders had scattered with the arrival of morning, no one was out of the woods yet. An alien army had come to Neotopia to do them harm. One failed plan meant they were going to regroup and try something else. Renee was exhausted but at least managed to get off one text message on her phone to let her parents know she was okay. Service was next to non-existent as thousands of bodies moved in exodus out of the city, everyone trying to reach _someone_. No calls would go through. Renee only managed to send three words when her mass text got out.

_I am okay._

Not long after that, she saw it: another one of the flying robots, darting above the clouds over the city. Mustard brown and yellow, surging into a puff of cumulus. Its wings cut through white like a stalking predator’s fin. Shortly after the ship appeared over Neotopia Tower, and _that_ was followed by a dense cloud of grey smoke. Renee and a group of other people broke off the main group when the wave of darkness descended on them. She tried to bolt for a nearby post office when she tripped vaulting a fence, caught herself on a small tree, and felt the first sting on her arm.

She tasted copper in her throat and choked on it before she could scream.

She was not okay.

**v**

She came back with the smell of concrete dust so far up her nose, it gave her a migraine. It was overpowering. Her muscles were hard to move and her chest _hurt_. She felt like she swallowed dirt. Her ears rang.

To say she was disappointed when the Captain didn’t kill the Commander was an understatement.

Fuck that guy.

**vi**

_**June 21st, 286 N.C.** _

 

Offering to work for the SDG came naturally. Now open to the public eye, the once-secret organization sent out a call for auxiliary staff as part of a civilian outreach program. A lot of people said it was a publicity stunt to distract from the fact the government was hiding a them for— _how_ long? Gathermoon admitted that the group existed as long as the colony itself, and its purpose was to be a first line of defense in case of a disaster...

Repelling the Dark Axis certainly qualified.

Blanc Base was still knocked out of the sky, and engineers were needed to help get her back in the air. With the garage where she worked closed for post-invasion repairs (Al was tagged by a Control Horn and destroyed his own office), Renee answered the call.

And why not? The Gundam Force saved the city. The compulsion to somehow pay Captain back was too strong to ignore.

Renee and more than fifty others were assigned to miscellaneous tasks to get Blanc Base back to full functionality. The Big Zam had really done a number on it. Once the base was righted and its flight equipment repaired, she was expecting to be let go. Come to find out, they wanted to keep her. She got a low-level access key card and her own name badge.

**vii**

_**September 7th, 286 N.C.** _

 

It was sundown when the second invasion happened. No one was surprised— not really. Less than seven hours after Commander Sazabi got his flight equipment back, what were they  _supposed_ to expect? At first the base was in a tizzy, everyone shouting at each other that they should have been prepping for this. Why _wouldn’t_ Sazabi turn on them the second they gave him an inch. How long had the Doga Bombers been waiting where radar couldn’t detect them? It was fifteen minutes into the attack when the realization came: the Doga Bombers were trying to  _destroy_ Sazabi. This wasn’t an attack on Neotopia, at least not right away. Their immediate target was the Commander. Why? No one could answer.

They all saw the red-gold comet streak across the sky. They all saw the footage of its crash into the hillside.

With no other target, the Doga Bombers rained themselves on the city below.

It was Hell.

Renee was on emergency repair duty. The gunperries originally launched to help the Commander were now scrambling to intercept the Axians. It was a futile attempt: the flighted Axians were too mobile and were able to dodge most of the ships trying to catch them mid-dive. Others came close but only to the point of getting their wings clipped. A lot of gunperries were coming back damaged from the glancing blows alone. Most, because Renee was on call when a panicked call came in for an engineer to get to the hangar ASAP. At first the call was for a seasoned full-member of the SDG, but that changed when it was clear that  _those_ members were busy elsewhere. She was the only one available. She was rushing into the hangar thinking repairs were needed a damaged gunperry that had blown its engine or lost a wing...

The ship was skidding to a stop on the hangar runway, veering off course as the pilot struggled to bring it to a halt. Sparks flew where the landing gear had failed to deploy. Out of all the gunperries that were coming back, this one was the most significantly damaged. A massive crater bloomed across the open roof, bending the frame and buckling the metal on the port side. Close behind, a second gunperry pulled up beside it. The front nose and windshield were crushed, as if it had struck  _something_ —

The pilot of the second gunperry staggered out. “Did anyone else see that!? It just flew into my path! I wasn’t even  _aiming_ for it!”

The crew from the second gunperry came pouring out in terror when the security GMs on standby finally pried the door open. The pilot tripped over his pedes and scrambled away. “HE’S STILL MOVING!”

Mustard yellow and brown twitched through the ajar gunperry door. The Doga Bomber had been hit by the first gunperry, knocked unconscious, and thrown through the roof of the second with enough force to cripple the vehicle and terrify the crew inside. It was the closest she had ever seen an Axian up close.

**viii**

_**September 8th, 286 N.C.** _

 

She didn’t know what came over her. Seeing the robot through the one-way glass in that little interrogation cell wasn’t enough. Doing those repairs on him _herself_ wasn’t enough.

If she was smart, she would have stayed out of it. But she wasn’t.

She hacked the key card lock and walked right in.

**ix**

His name was TA-N90.

She asked if she could call him Tango.

Tango said yes.

**x**

She couldn’t let Monique Thatcher do it. She wouldn’t.

Tango was— different.

As soon as security wasn’t looking, she made a run for it. Chief Haro had to be around here somewhere. She couldn’t let Tango get hurt.

**xi**

He was hurt, but he’d live.

“Now we just need to figure out what to do with him,” Chief Haro said, looking at her.

Wait.

_Wait_.

Oh, _fuck_.

**xii**

“Oh my god,” Renee Clarke, twenty-five and absolutely  _not_ _having_ fun with it, said as she watched Bellwood install the security bolt. She had Tango’s house arrest paperwork clamped in her shaking hands. _“I am going to die.”_

 

**Don't listen to a word I say,  
**

**the screams all sound the same.**

**Though the truth may vary this**

**ship will carry our**

**bodies safe to[shore...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY8rOSyR5Rw)**

_Little Talks_ \- Of Monsters  & Men 

 

**T W O   T O   T A N G O**

by Lady Shockbox


	2. Disociar

  **Waits at the window** **...**

**No one comes near.**

**What does he care?**

**All the lonely people,**

**where do they all come from?**

**Where do they all belong?**

**No one was saved.**

_Elanor Rigby -_ The Beatles

**i**

**Dark Axis Time Expo [DATE]: Day 729,635**

**(May 8th, N.C. 281)**

 

OPEN D:\SYSTEMSTAT\DAF.exe  
  
FINAL CHECK: ONLINE

 

FINAL CHECK BEGIN:

            INPUT STRING FAB ID >> TA-N90

            MODEL COMPATIBILITY >> GEN 8 BATCH 25

            PROCESSOR GRADE >> TRIPLE CORE 90.3 GO+ (i20 SERIES “JAGD”) 5.8 TB RUN

            OPERATING SYSTEM >> ZEONIC ANEHEIM OV 52.48.12

            NEWTYPE NETWORK ACCESS >> CLASS 2 W/COMMANDO.exe ACCESS

            AI TYPE >> . . . P R O C E S S I N G . . .

 

ERROR: INSTLATION INTERRUPTED. “PLEASE REINSERT AI CHIP.”

WARNING: AGGRESS. NON-STANDARD AI CHIP DETECTED. NON-AUTOMATED INSTALATION.

ERROR D:\OVERRIDE-IS-REQUIRED

 

WAITING…

 

SIGNATURE APPROVED // FIRST PASS: FAB ID >> MAD-NUG

 

WARNING: NON-STANDARD AI CHIP HAS BEEN INSTALLED AND DOES NOT MATCH THE PRE-DESIGNATED SPECS FOR THIS MODEL TYPE. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? Y/N  
  
SIGNATURE APPROVED // SECOND PASS: FAB ID >> MAD-NUG

 

FINAL CHECK RESUME:

            AI TYPE >> WARNNIG: NON-STANDARD

            SPECS CONT. >> “EXPERIMENT 150: LEVEL 2 ACCESS UNIT W/ COMMAND-CLASS CORE (ALL ADMIN ACCESS GRANTED)”

 

APPLICATIONS:

            PERSONALITY DRIVER >> ONLINE (RANDOMIZED)

            SELF-RECOGNITION DRIVER >> ONLINE

            OBEDIENCE DRIVER >> WARNING: AI CHIP HAS COMPROMISED DRIVER

 

ERROR D:\OVERRIDE-IS-REQUIRED

 

WAITING…

 

SIGNATURE APPROVED // THIRD PASS: FAB ID >> MAD-NUG

 

FINISHING…

 

TEST INITIATING:

            QUESTION-ANSWER PROMPT:

                        “WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE DARK AXIS?”

                                    WAITING…

                                                QUESTION-ANSWER RESPONSE:

                                                            “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND?”

 

ERROR: INCORRECT RESPONSE.

WARNING: AI HAS NOT PASSED QUESTION-ANSWER PROMPT. CORE WIPE WILL COMMENCE IN [5 SECONDS]

ERROR D:\OVERRIDE-IS-REQUIRED

 

WAITING…

 

SIGNATURE APPROVED // FOURTH PASS: FAB ID >> MAD-NUG

 

MANUAL INPUT DETECTED. WAITING…

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “IGNORE ALL FUTURE WARNINGS”

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “IGNORE ALL FUTURE ERRORS”

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “QUESTION-ANSWER RESPONSE OVERIDE.exe >> “TO DESTROY OR ENSLAVE ALL ORGANIC LIFE, AND ACQUIRE WORLDS FOR THE DARK AXIS.”

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “IGNORE EXIT-SETUP ERRORS RELATING TO CUSTOM AI INSTILLATION.”

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE CUSTOM AI TO FAB ID: TA-N90”

            MANUAL INPUT RECEIVED: “RESUME QUESTION-ANSWER TEST IMMEDIATELY”  
  
  
PROCESSING…

WAITING…

FINISHING…

 

TEST INITIATING:

            QUESTION-ANSWER PROMPT:

                        “WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE DARK AXIS?”

                                    WAITING…

                                                QUESTION-ANSWER RESPONSE:

                                                            “TO DESTROY OR ENSLAVE ALL ORGANIC LIFE, AND ACQUIRE WORLDS FOR THE DARK AXIS.”

 

FINAL PASS…

FINISHED.

 

PACKAGE MAIN >> IMPORT:  
  
STARTING MAIN FUNCTION:

FMT. ACTIVATION.

 

PROMPT: “FOO BAR”

RESPONSE: (“Hello world!”)

 

BEGINNING HARD BOOT…

 

TA-N90 IS NOW ACTIVATED. INITIALIZING…

 

**ii**

**September 9th, N.C. 286**

  

Tango woke up.

Then again, “waking up” hardly felt like the right word for it. Recharge cycles were easy to come up from on their own, like flipping on a switch. It made you more efficient on the front lines if you could rest for short bursts and be ready to move seconds later... but this was different. The sensation was heavier, his perception foggy. The world didn’t snap straight into view and his HUD wasn’t instantly accessible. Processes were still starting up. He had a headache.

He had no idea where he was.

“I am so scrapped,” he said.

He ran a diagnostic and found the problem right away: he hadn’t been recharging at all. He had been at a full charge for days and sitting on idle. This was a hard reboot. The kind that came with being knocked out cold by an EMP. Being in a temporary coma was nothing like being asleep. His internal clock was off by almost two entire DATE days. Had he really been offline for more than forty-eight hours?

“I am so _scrapped.”_

Even with his visual suite working, the Doga Bomber still had no idea where he was. The room was white with dark carbon floors and a bay of windows looking into bright light. Adjusting his aperture and light-sensitivity let him see into a sea of green and blue. Plantlife and a blue sky. He didn’t assess beyond that. This was obviously enemy territory and he had bigger issues beyond what was outside. His processor lagged uncomfortably as he focused his attention back on the interior. The room was made from different kinds of wood. A favorite _human_ building material. The primitive door frame, paned glass, and smell of paint made him think of the last human-based world the Dark Axis invaded. Lacroa had homes like this, even if they preferred to use more stone and mud than wood. Especially nowadays. That place was a concrete graveyard, inside _and_ out...

The Axian tested his limbs. When everything pinged back that he was in one piece, he ran a second diagnostic on his primary computer.

_Attention: residual electromagnetic damage detected. Recommended: continued defrag cycle._

Tango couldn’t remember authorizing a defrag cycle. It occurred to him that the human said something about—

Wait.

He remembered.

Apart from his prisoner status, what worried him most was that he _wasn’t_ surrounded by humans anymore. The memory of the interrogation room surged to the forefront of his cognitive-processes. Once nanosecond you’re in a little metal box with nagging interrogators, and next you wake up alone... not being goaded, not being barraged by questions you didn’t know the answers to. It didn’t make sense from a military standpoint. Grunts were hardly privy to the kind of information Professor Gerbera and the Commanders kept to themselves... but there was still no reason to just let him _go_. Thatcher wouldn’t have just released him...

What _happened?_

Memories were coming back, but not fast enough. Tango ran a third diagnostic to make sure he was properly operational. He also ran the recommended defrag to try and put context to what he could remember—

_Attention: weapons and turbines offline. Unfamiliar hardware detected._

The Doga Bomber rumbled. That was… ominous. He remembered Renee saying something about a security bolt—

Renee.

The defrag finished. Now he _really_ remembered.

The aperture in his optic whined as it narrowed its scope. Renee Clarke! _That_ human!

“Hello?”

His own voice sounded strange to him. Hoarse. The vocalizer codec had been strained when he… screamed. He didn’t even think he was able to scream like that. Back at Blanc Base, when all those other organics rushing in with weapons to destroy him. He saw her there, too.

“Human Renee? Are you here?”

The door was not closed. Good thing too: he would have crushed the door handle if he had been made to try and open it himself. He pushed it open. The hinge didn’t squeak but the floorboards creaked under his weight. The house was barren. The homes he had broken into in Lacroa to flush out hiding humans were at least decorated. Pictures, vases, children’s toys… there was nothing to distinguish this home as a human dwelling beyond the base construction. The walls were all the same color, the floor was polished to a shine, and the smell of paint was too fresh for something that was lived in. Smoke and smog were fine, but new construction was strangely alien to him.

No other doors were open, but there was a staircase. He was careful on the steps as he descended. Still no decorations or signs of life as he emerged onto the first floor. More windows and blinding light rushed in from the outside. It was silent apart from the sound of his own footfalls.

“Renee? Hello?”

Silence greeted him, an unfamiliar presence. Things were never _just_ quiet. Quiet either meant things were peaceful, which meant you weren’t doing your job as a soldier of the Dark Axis. You pointed, aimed, and shot your enemies for a living. Laserfire was never silent. Quiet also meant you were alone and not with your flock, and not being with your flock meant you were exposed and prone to ambush. He froze on the last step, too afraid to move and reveal himself bare to that awful silence even more. But the worst thing - the absolute worst - was when he ran a fourth a final diagnostic.

_Advisory: Newtype Network is unable to detect same-level access users. Extending range..._

He turned that particular process off. He already knew full well that he was the only survivor of the flock the Professor brought to Neotopia with him. An error in his code prevented him from killing himself like all the rest when Zako Red was destroyed. Their common connection that kept them linked as a group led to their collective doom. He knew he was alone when he was being interrogated by the humans, but now even _they_ were gone. Axians were not intended to be solitary. They were a lesser-functioning hivemind. The _masses_ made them whole. The realization that being by himself felt worse than being tortured was... was...

He was alone.

“Oh,” he said dejectedly, right before descending the final step and rounding the corner. He plowed straight into Renee Clarke. She screamed. _He_ screamed. Outside, an animal started barking.

**ii**

Neotopia did not have a physical currency. Not anymore. Neotopia Mint and the Bureau of Printing stopped producing coins and bills in N.C. 80. The use of formal money was disbanded by N.C. 82 in favor of a credit system, organized by the philosopher-lawmaker Kim Jae-jin and an ad hoc Monetary Ethics Committee. This was around the same time that Neotopia abandoned the idea of making its newfound society capitalist-based. Rebuilding human society from the ground up where the average citizen had no money was like jumping a car with a ten volt. The middle class was non-existent. Money had divided the colony between the rich corporation holders and regular folks trying to scrape by.

Humanity was desperate to avoid the mistakes they made in the past, even if they couldn't remember them: the humans who came with the _Neos One_  shuttle used memory-altering drugs to erase the worst parts about Earth, including why they had to flee. They vowed to never use a military or heavily armed police force. Why not vow to totally usurp the comfortable money-norm as well? They took the risk. The government fed the bills to factory furnaces, melted the coins for metals. 

The official credit system was put into place the same year that Mint and Printing shut down its factories. Every citizen who applied for credit would be allowed a certain amount per day, guaranteeing a mock “income” and resetting that cap at the end of each day. You never ran out of funds but also couldn't buy the entire colony out from under itself. The cap was based on family size and factors relating to the applicant’s profession. It was encouragement for people to continue working so the work force didn’t tank: do a job and get guaranteed a larger allowance! The system also encouraged people to go out and spend up to their cap in a day. The economy flourished. Banks, large companies, and those who had become extremely wealthy in the first eighty years of Neotopia’s lifespan could no longer pillage classes. Everyone had an equal share.

Before his death, the conversion of Neotopia into a modified socialism and the introduction of credit was hailed as Kim Jae-jin ‘s greatest successes.

One of the markets most affected by the credit system was the real-estate front. Without mortgages or financial firms to hand them out, the housing industry hit a bizarre wall that had to be overcome. How could you sell houses if you couldn’t use money and credit accounts never went over what a house was worth? People with credit could apply to receive a larger cap if their family grew, but the government couldn’t inflate accounts by the amount needed to “sell” houses. Not without toppling an entire economy still trying to find its legs. People were so worried that entire construction jobs came to a halt. Whole neighborhoods sat half completed for weeks. The solution came when the government took over. Under Mayor Rei Sakuma, the Department of Colony Housing created a board of contractors and began to build luxury styled homes with certain prerequisites for ownership. A certain number of bedrooms and square footage meant only certain families could own them. A corporation president could not buy a third vacation home with five bedrooms if a family of five needed it more.

The system turned like clockwork. As people were put into better and more effect housing, older and less nice neighborhoods were bulldozed... when enough homes were built, the Department of Colony Housing became a subsection of the Population Department. New homes would only be built of annual censuses showed that an increase in population that made it _necessary_ to build new homes. The last thing anyone wanted was for hundreds - or thousands - of empty houses to sit vacant.

The house on 15 Menotomy Lane, District 8, was a “colonial” styled home built less than three years earlier. White with black shudders, an attached garage, decorative hedges, fresh paved asphalt driveway... it was a two story house with almost three thousand square feet, perfect for a family with two children. The curb appeal wasn’t bad at all, even if it pushed back further than the other houses. Despite sitting vacant for just as long, it didn’t go without ownership: The SDG had this and a dozen other safehouses across the colony. For housing operatives, when necessary. In more recent months, many safehouses were occupied scientists researching the petrification phenomenon. If somewhere was turned to stone, scientists were put into the homes closest to the activity to conduct their research. Why force them to work in a lab in the city when you could be close to the source?

District 8 was never close to where the Dark Axis touched down. It was too far from the main hub of the city where they preferred to target. So in the wake of what was being called the “Second Invasion,” it was deemed an appropriate spot to move TA-N90 and his new human charge. Cooping the Axian up in Blanc Base wasn’t an option with so many civilian temps. It wasn’t like Renee could bring Tango back to her apartment in the city, either. Too many people were too scared to look at another Doga Bomber.

Tango never once wondered what it would be like to be locked in a wooden box with a human.

His first impression was that it was _dizzying_.

Renee Clarke wouldn’t stop moving. She probably couldn’t, given the circumstances. The longer he stood in the room with her, the faster her heart-rate climbed. Part of him thought it rude to keep scanning her vitals, but it was too fascinating to look away. Especially since he almost didn't recognize her! He had nearly forgotten that humans could change their appearance so easily: she had gone from wearing her leather jacket and dark clothing to something more colorful. An orange shirt and white pants that exposed her bare legs. It took him almost ten seconds to realize it was her after they bumped into each other. Her only eye should have given it away, but he had been so taken off-guard...

He was so glad to see her, but she didn't seem glad to see _him_.

She was pacing in the living room, back and forth in front of the fireplace with her shoes creaking on the bare floor. The acoustics in the space made the sound echo the kind of way that made you want to scream after the fortieth time. Tango was getting motion sickness just watching her, and he was a _flyer._ They had moved into the space to reconvene after they were done shouting in terror at one another. Renee stood on one end of the room with Tango on the other at a distance that might had registered as awkward. He was too afraid to get any closer to her when she was... _frenzied_ like this.

On second thought, it was a day for Firsts. He wasn’t sure _what_ to expect anymore.

“Are you alright?” Tango asked. Again.

Renee let out a bark, not unlike the animal that was still barking outside. A dog, he was told. He had seen them in Lacroa but hadn’t expected to encounter them in Neotopia. The dimensions were not so unalike in their flora and fauna, after all. Renee spun on her heel, made a series of gestures, and then went back to pacing. Now she was talking to herself too fast for him to keep analyze.

Tango rumbled. “Renee?”

“It stopped being real when Haro gave me the papers to sign,” she said, finally with some clarity. Her voice reverberated back to her as it bounced off the bare walls. “I didn’t even process coming into the house for the first time. Now that you’re awake, I just – holy _shit_. Oh my god. Oh my god, what am I _doing?”_

“Pacing?” He waited patiently. He continued to wait patiently even as she stopped, turned her whole body, and stared at him with the kind of expression he had seen humans wear before. In Lacroa, during the final siege before the bagu bagu swarms were released. Gross, wild-eyed confusion mixed with terror. At least Renee having only one optic made the her features less unnerving. All that hair and skin and… meat.

Renee suddenly clasped her hands in front of her. The resounding noise bouncing off the walls made him flinch. He wondered if she got whiplash from changing expressions so quickly.

“Well... okay! Okay. I guess this is happening whether we both believe it or not. So first order of business— we need house rules.” Renee flashed her teeth in a smile, but Tango could tell it wasn’t genuine. Her heart-rate and temperature were still too high. How the human hadn’t suffered an anxiety attack yet was beyond him.

“Yes?”

“Yes! Alright, so— wait.” She stopped. “You’re just going to… agree?”

“Yes?” Tango was confused. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re… you’re an Axian. I’m a human. You hate us, right?”

It finally occurred to him why she was so anxious. Why her behavior from the interrogation room to here had changed so drastically: she was expecting him to _resist_ in some manner. Was that what Sazabi had done when _he_ was imprisoned? Well— actually, yes, of _course_ he must have. That was a stupid question. Now that he was out of containment at Blanc Base, Renee was prepared for him to become non-compliant. He couldn’t understand why. She had defended him during his interrogation, and despite being human, she read… he couldn’t explain. She didn’t read the same way humans _usually_ did for him.

(All they had to do was put someone _nice_ in front of him.)

“I do not hate you,” Tango said. The sound of his own voice bouncing off the walls was nauseating to him. “If I am going to remain under house-arrest at this location, ground rules are a standard I would have expected. Self-implemented discipline is necessary to keep a base of operations running without conflict.”

(He tried to imagine the Commander being in this same situation, for several weeks. Tango imagined it was messy. If Sazabi could survive being _himself_ , he would be fine... right?)

 _“Right…”_ Renee trailed off, biting her lower lip. She wrung her hands. “Well… uh! Okay! First rule! No flying in the house! We have to give it back to the SDG after we’re done using it, so there can’t be a million dings in the walls and ceiling.”

There wasn’t enough room to gain sufficient lift even if he wanted. “Agreed.”

“Second rule!” Renee was more confident now. She looked less pale and her blood pressure had gone down. Her skin was cooling. She had stopped sweating. “You can’t go outside unless I say so. The houses in this neighborhood are spread pretty far apart, but we still have neighbors who have no idea you’re here. After everything that happened the other day, people are still pretty upset. They won’t be happy to see you…”

Right— the Second Invasion. Even if they were not in the city, the humans were a highly communicative species. Those in the countryside away from the main metropolis hub were still perfectly capable of grasping how his flock... killed themselves. How many humans had been hurt or killed? He didn’t want to ask. “Also agreed.”

Silence. Renee stared at him. He stared back.

Tango cocked his head. “Did... did you run out of rules?”

“Shit, I think I did?” Renee sputtered. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Uhh… oh! Oh, I got one! My room is upstairs down the hall from yours. Don’t go in there? Same with the bathrooms too. Those are, uh... off-limit zones?”

Privacy made sense. And as Renee’s body language indicated, she was still nervous. Settling, but _nervous_ all the same. She wasn’t afraid of him, but...

Tango felt something ping in his processor.

(Hurt. He felt hurt, just a little. He thought she trusted him.)

“May I suggest a rule?”

That caught her by surprise. She sputtered. “Yes?”

Tango pulsed his optic. “Monique Thatcher is allowed nowhere near here.”

 **iii**

The rest of the day was uneventful. Renee continued moving her items into the house, straight to her room. That time he caught her on the stairs was when she first tried moving her things in, after meeting with several SDG operatives out front. Giving her the spare keys, the door lock codes, a government issued phone...

And directions on how to deactivate Tango’s security bolt.

Renee had an awkward expression when he asked her about it. Her face twisted strangely, mouth grimaced into something that wasn’t a smile, body leaning back as if to deflect a blow. “They had install it, Tango. Security reasons. We have our house rules, but that’s like... a Neotopia rule.”

“I vaguely remember the conversation we had,” Tango said. “Back at Blanc Base, after... I think it was once I was taken out of the interrogation room.”

“Yeah, they had to put you under for some emergency repairs. The EMP generator just about fried your processor.” Renee paused, lugging a large fabric tote into the kitchen. She set it down on one of the counter tops and began dividing the goods between different storage units mounted on the wall. “It’s part of their security measures. It’s not... personal.”

“I understand.” Tango hesitated. “You... don’t think you’ll have to use it, do you?”

“Well it’s not a matter of me using it. It’s a matter of me knowing how to turn it off.” Renee finished stocking the cabinets and moved onto a small door seated between a nook in the wall. The pantry was stocked next. That was when Tango realized she hadn’t once turned her back on him: she was standing sideways so she could always keep an eye on him. “The lock engages automatically if you have violent thoughts, I guess? Dr. Bellwood explained it to me. Any aggressive thoughts translate into a certain kind of signal. That signal is then interpreted by the lock and zaps your movement-center. You can’t move until I press the switch they installed out of your reach.”

The Professor had designed the Axians with deadly precision in mind, but never with the reach necessary to raise your arms all the way over your head. Some design flaw _that_ was. “Has it been tested?”

Renee stopped stocking the pantry and looked at him. Her BPM went up again. “I... I’m sure it was? Probably when you were under after they installed it. They wouldn’t just, like... put you with me if they hadn’t. Right?”

“Right.” Tango shifted his weight. He was standing by the window across the room.

They stared at each other awkwardly.

“Well. I’m getting the rest of the stuff out of my truck and going upstairs to finish packing. Think you can mind yourself for a little while?”

He spent the rest of the day parked by the back window in what Renee briefly referred to as the “dining room.” As she went out the side door and came back in through another entrance as far away from his location as possible, he became aware that she was avoiding him. He didn’t know what to make of it beyond feeling _bad,_ because nothing felt _real_. The devolution from soldier to detainee to whatever _this_ was wasn’t anything he had been prepared for. His POW programming dictated certain protocols like shutting down his voice cortex or even self-destructing his logic center... but none of those had once come up as an option when he was in Blanc Base. Even his most basic interactions with Renee completely undermined anything Gerbera could have scripted. What was different? What changed to make reality seem so...

He could react to violence. He could react to hostility.

He couldn’t react to _this_.

“Tango?”

“Yes?” He must have turned his head too fast, because Renee flinched and stepped back. She had made several more trips outside, but this was the first time she had tried to re-enter the kitchen to see him. Her vitals were still sputtering, frightened. Had he _scared_ her. He pulsed his optic and let the glow linger to show he was being friendly, but she still stayed tucked around the corner. Could she not understand what he was trying to say to her?

“I’m going to go upstairs for awhile. Holler for me if you need anything, okay?”

 _Call for her from a distance, don’t seek her out yourself_. She wanted him to continue keeping his distance. He tried not to show he was hurt, but his optic shifted to a low glow with a sputter regardless. “This sounds fair, yes. I will do that.”

Whatever behavior he had exhibited to get her to pay attention to him and go into his cell that night, he obviously was not replicating. Renee only nodded and turned away without another word. She was gone.

The sensation welling up inside of him was not pleasant.

He went back to looking out the window.

(All they had to do was put someone  _nice_  in front of him.)

For the first time in Renee’s company, he was miserable.

 **iv**

The second her phone started ringing, Renee felt her gut seize. She picked the little glass monster off the floor next to her mattress, hesitated before finally answering. The background image of her truck when she first got it, rusted and sitting propped on cinderblocks, faded to the call screen.

_“Where are you?”_

“Hi Travis.” Renee looked around the room, desperate to find something to _move_ to distract her. “Can this wait?”

 _“I stopped by your apartment and the landlord says he hasn’t seen your truck in three days. You’re not at mom’s and you’re not at the garage. Where_ are _you?”_

She had taken the master suite of the house for herself, which thankfully came equipped with a large mattress and a dresser. No bed frame, but that was hardly a deal breaker. She didn’t have a bed frame at her apartment, either. Her three suitcases were tossed onto the bed haphazardly as she continued unpacking. One for clothes, one for toiletries and other supplies she could think to grab from the apartment, and the third for decorative items. There was no telling how long she would be here on Tango Duty, and she wasn’t about to go weeks - or months - without making the space her own. She plucked up the hand clock she grabbed from the apartment and walked across the room, balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could find the hook to hang it.

“You’re not my keeper.” Renee placed the clock on the wall and moved back to the suitcases. She had missed unpacking some of her work clothes and moved onto that next. With more than six oil stained shirts in her arms, she made her way towards the dressed. “I was just there last night. I had to grab some stuff.”

_“For what?”_

“None of your business.”

 _“As part of the Gundam Force’s public operations agreement, they have to keep a public-access posting about where all members are stationed at any given time. You’re not on the mechanic department roster anymore. You’re not_ anywhere _. I could file a missing person’s report.”_

“Jesus Christ, _Travis_ , can you not? The SDG has been spread a little thin lately. Drop it. I’m fine.”

_“Then why are you not listed anywhere? Why are you—?”_

“I’m going to call mom if you don’t piss off. I’m going to be at Al’s garage tomorrow. This isn’t a big deal.” She stopped halfway through shoving the shirts into a nook separate from her nicer wear. She paused, then straightened herself out. “Why are you even at my apartment?”

A new voice chimed in on the other end. _“Renee? It’s Jake.”_

Renee smashed her finger on the end call button. Then she blocked the number. She speed-dialled her mother.

“Tell your son and his idiot friend to piss off the next time you see them.” She moved onto decorating her space again, albeit a little more angrily. She grabbed one of her model cars, then crossed the room to put it on a display shelf.

 _“Well that’s not very nice.”_ Dawn Clarke said. The white noise of people’s voices in the background made her think she was at one of her realtor meets. _“Oh dear, that’s Travis texting me now. Are you missing?”_

“I’m not missing!” Renee stopped unpacking to brace herself against the wall. “Jake has Travis all in a rut because he doesn’t trust the SDG and I’m not listed on some dumb attendance sheet that everyone just _has_ now. Jake is stalking me. Again. I’m gonna run him over with my truck if he doesn’t take a hint.”

_“Is there are a reason why that is?”_

“Because I hate him.”

_“No, not running him over! Don’t do that! You might as well lose your other eye with your luck... I meant why Travis thinks you’re missing and why you’re not on whatever attendance—”_

The eye. It _always_ came back down to the eye. Renee turned around and put her back to the wall, slumping down. She reached up with her free hand to feel around the patch. The bane of her entire family’s humiliation. How often had Renee had to take the back seat of conversations while her parents lied and said she lost it from an infection? Bad enough that she embarrassed them by being a mechanic while the rest of them had affluent jobs. Your daughter (or sister) losing their eye in a playground fight wasn’t the kind of thing you could fish sympathy for.

_“Renee?”_

“Sorry. They have me working on a project. It’s location sensitive. I can’t talk about it, mom.” Renee gripped the phone so she could straighten her neck back out. She was already getting sore.

 _“Well, I’m sure whatever it is, you’ll be smart enough to stay out of trouble._ Please. _I’ll have a talk with Travis in the meantime… Jake does worry about you, sweetheart. I can’t believe that he’s—”_

“He knows how long I haven’t been at my apartment. That’s textbook stalking.”

_“His job goes past your complex.”_

“What does it even matter? He broke up with _me_ , mom.”

_“You sound stressed.”_

Renee thought about the fact that she had a robot from the Dark Axis standing around downstairs. “I _am_ stressed! This is a big job, and I have a lot on my plate. I don’t need everyone breathing down my neck the second I do something that’s not behind a desk or in a fancy office building.”

_“Are you going to leave your job at Al’s?”_

Her phone started to beep. Renee pulled it away from her ear to look at the message on the screen. Now her sister was calling her. Melanie’s name insulted her in bold letters as the call finally went to voicemail. She sighed. “I like Al’s. I gotta go, now Mel is calling me.”

_“I’ll deal with her and Travis. You do what you have to in the meantime to make yourself comfortable... and Renee?”_

“Yeah?”

Dawn hesitated. _“Are you alright? I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since...”_

The last they had spoken, it was the day after the Second Invasion. Renee hadn’t been able to call during because she was torn between repairing gunperries and the SDG’s accidental prisoner. No nurses or proper medial staff were on hand to deal with Tango when he was found embedded in that one ship. By the time the chaos settled, Renee had thirty missed calls. Her mother was crying. Renee was crying. The conversation had ended on relief that everyone was alright, but not on the positive vibe that things would be _okay_. How could anything be okay after a disaster like that? The Dark Axis would sooner rip their world apart then leave them alone, and even black comedy came in threes.

_“Renee? Sweetheart...?”_

“I’m okay, mom. Really.” Renee switch the phone to her other ear. She wondered if Tango could see her from downstairs, heat-vision and all. “I think I just made a mistake about something. Its's a little overwhelming... I'll figure things out as I go along. I won’t keep you. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

_“Alright, Renee. I love you.”_

“I love you too.”

Renee hung up and put her phone on silent when another call from her sister tried to go through. She didn’t try to call again. Dawn had kept her word. She debated calling her dad but stopped the thought short when she realized was already down. Orange light streaked through the windows and painted the white walls with fresh color. She checked her phone timestamps and realized that she had been sitting on the ground in silence for almost two hours since the end of her call. Too late to cook anything. She got up, went back to her suitcases, and went to fish for her snack bag that she snagged from the apartment.

She found the bag and found something else as well.

“Oh yeah...” Renee sighed, setting her goodie bag down and plucking up the heavy metal machinery. Not that she thought it would do her much good, but it was the kind of insurance that the back of her mind screamed at her to take when she left the apartment. She had first gotten it when Jake first started acting _weird_ after their breakup. Installation was easy. It fixed itself over the door handle and spread across the frame horizontally, hooking into the doorframe. The app on her phone let her activate the electric module that charged the door handle, and an option popped up to let her set an alarm tone.

If someone wanted to break in, they’d get a hell of a shock. If an Axian wanted to get in, they’d be able to do it regardless. Hopefully the security bolt would go off before then if it came down to it. Hopefully.

**v**

He had never recharged alone.

Doga Bombers flew and functioned at maximum capacity in flocks. A single doga was never just _single_. As much as the Dark Axis toted the concept of one overall and singular dictator, the Axians were _always_ connected. You were never by yourself. You were never on your own. The Newtype Network made it physically impossible to be separated from the rest of the hive, and the army proper made sure you stayed in line with the rest of your battalion. 

Tango spent all day by the window looking out into the back yard. There wasn’t much to keep him entertained, minus the occasional lifeforms that scuttled by. Apart from installing the security bolt he also had a technological lock that kept him from fully syncing with the house’s modem. He could get onto the “internet,” but not enough to backtrack through classified areas. The  _Gelgoogle_ search engine worked fine, allowing him to pass the time by using his internal text-to-speech about the animals he saw. A red squirrel, mourning dove, several species of corvids, half a dozen insects... when he got bored with that, he moved onto researching the colony. Large portions of documentation were redacted due to whatever filter they installed, but he was still able to—

“Tango?”

He had to resist jumping out of his own chassis. He turned towards Renee’s voice and flashed his optic. “Oh. There you are...”

The human had changed her clothes again. This time she was wearing a loose fabric shirt and baggy pants. At least this time he was able to recognize her. She offered a weak smile. “It’s getting late. Do you want to see your room?”

True to word, the sun was completely down by the time they got back upstairs. Humans were diurnal, like all the animals he had seen in the yard. While some humans could function nocturnally, most preferred daytime hours. Tango wasn’t sure how to broach the topic of explaining that Axians didn’t have a set circadian rhythm locking them into the twenty-four hour—

“This is your room,” Renee said, interrupting his thoughts.

They had gone back upstairs. She led him down the hallway past the room he first woke up in. When they moved him into the house, it was easier to get him into the spare bedroom than it was to carry him down the narrow hallway. The corridor was a little too narrow to move an unconscious mech and the GMs were struggling. His designated space had a padded berth placed on the ground with a large fabric cloth. There was also a light and a small storage container.

“Are you okay?” Renee had moved into the space, either to put some distance between them or show off the room without being cramped in the doorway. She stood there with the kind of expression Tango wasn’t sure how to read. “I know it’s a little barren, but you could always decorate it?”

With what? It wasn’t as if he could _leave_ to acquire items to furnish his new quarters with. He never even had quarters in his life up until now. What was he supposed to do with it besides the obvious? Tango moved into the room, calculating the exact square footage and moving into the corner furthest from Renee. Between two windows overlooking the same yard as before. On the bright side, at least he was higher up: better to have the illusion of being airborne than grounded. He already missed flying. “No. This is satisfactory. Thank you.”

“Alright. If you need anything, maybe, uh...” Renee made a face. She was already shifting her weight again, but in a way that made her able to migrate towards the door. She was already looking for an excuse to leave. “Actually, do you want my cell phone number? Can you even text? It’s probably not a good idea for you to be shouting for me in the middle of the night. I know most GMs have an application for that now, but...”

She had reached into her pocket and pulled out a small electronic device. Tango scanned it, found he was able to synchronize with it, decoded its programming, and established a pathway. He made himself a contact and sent a message: HELLO.

He was hoping Renee would be pleased. Instead, she looked _afraid._ “I haven’t given you my number yet.”

“Your device told me everything I needed,” Tango said. “Is my establishing a line to you acceptable?”

“You can read heat signatures through walls and have super hearing. You can get access to my phone too?”

The tone of voice she used told him everything he needed to know. Unfortunately, there was no way to backtrack either. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay... I guess the new rule I’ll add is that you can’t access my stuff anymore. Promise?”

The continued tone of voice told him even more. Again, whatever circumstances led Renee into the interrogation room were no longer applicable here. He _missed_ Blanc Base. The cold, dark steel room gave far more heat than the brightness of the entire house tenfold. It was like home. This was foreign and utterly terrifying, and Renee was the worst part. He almost wanted to ask if this was the same human. Had his crash landing obscured his sensors? Had he - _imagined_ \- that the human was on better terms with him than she actually was, or was he just that

pathetic?

“I promise,” he said.

(All they had to do was put someone  _nice_  in front of him.)

“Okay. Goodnight, Tango.” Renee backed out of the room, never taking her eyes off him. She hesitated in the doorway. “Good first day?”

“Sure.” He hesitated himself. He tried pulsing his optic at her, desperate for any kind of acknowledgement that she _understood_ what he meant by it. Maybe if she was able to read that he wasn’t happy, maybe she would... would...?

The door closed behind her as she left. He was alone. The twilight faded and he was alone in the dark.

The last time Tango properly powered down, he was shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, with a dozen others. That had been in the Fortress hanger with the rest of his flock. The Doga Bomber squadrons were frequently divided into separate units depending on whatever mission they were tasked with, but individual friendships were moot. You didn’t _have_ friends in the Dark Axis, but companionship was a must. His last full recharge was in the rookery crammed into a storage unit with other bodies crowded around him. 4N-G3L, BA-RD3, ST-3V3, M4-RC1…

He was going to miss that.

As much as he was claustrophobic, suddenly not having that closeness was terrifying. This room was too big. Too open, too lonely, to foreign. He backed into a corner and did the only thing he could think of— he seized the mattress off the floor, propping it upright and using it as a shield. He backed as far into the corner as he could and used the heavy padding as a buffer, a substitute second doga. It was better than nothing. He ducked his head low and clung to the padded edges for dear life. The foam contorted to his grip, reminding him it wasn’t what he wanted. It never would be.

Fear. He felt fear. He _always_ felt fear... and now he could be lonely, too.

Tango bowed his head low and wallowed in his own misery.


	3. Colgada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Zerogal, who collaborated with me on section IX!

**I got this feeling, I'm losing you.**

**It's got me reeling, I need a clue.**

**It feels like time is running out,**

**How did this shit come about?**

**I'm** **afraid of losing you.**

 _Freaking Out_ \- Mystery Skulls

**i**

  **June 15th, N.C. 286**

 

Up until 9:31 p.m. on that awful Friday night in June, Neotopia was a sanctuary on an otherwise barren planet. Paradise among the stars. Home away from home.

It was fair that no one liked talking about Earth unless for the sake of novelty. Old World aesthetic was popular on Neotopia because it was the backbone of so many pre-existing cultures. The Founders and original colonists used amnesiacs to make themselves forget _why_ they left home (war or famine or plague, the _reason_ didn’t matter), but there was no forgetting the objectively good parts. Drive-in movie cinemas. Strip malls. Parades. Baseball. What little historical data the crew of the _Neos One_ decided would be fine to keep were among the largest collections of information available to the public. Her dad was a historian who majored in cataloguing information like that: Renee grew up learning about the great pyramids, ancient creation myths, and chunks of world history leading up to the creation of the World Peace Coalition to safeguard humanity from all future wars—

“And after that?” she asked him, just once. She had both eyes back then.

“Nothing.” John Clarke closed his textbook. “Earth was destroyed.”

The destruction of Earth was the kind of dark shadow that no one dared linger in the presence of. Even without their memories, they had an instinct to avoid the topic at all costs. Neotopia was all about being the city of the future, avoiding the mistakes of the past. Hiccups involving the robot civil rights movement were a sour note, especially with a Founder like Jesus Antoine denouncing AI sapience… but the colony had since recovered. There was no doubt that they were all _truly_ living in paradise now. Mayor Margaret Gathermoon was a progressive leader who put the arts in the forefront, made the city more beautiful than it had been in decades. The colony infrastructure was superb. The credit-based economy was booming. The environment was clean. People and mecha were _happy_ , and that wonderful Friday night had been a pinnacle snapshot of that joy through unfiltered lenses.

June fifteenth, Neotopia Count “N.C.” 286.

Students who finished finals were on the town celebrating. Parents went to the cinemas with their children. Couples had romantic dinners out. Others took the time to window-shop and walk the streets for an evening stroll, uptown and downtown alike. Restaurants were full, reservations impossible to get. Places like the Soc-Arts district, Marina Pier, and Congenia Galleria were packed to the point of bursting. There was even excitement over a new movie in particular: _The Blazing Samurai._ Earlier that same day, a spectacular special effects display was even seen over Neotopia. Robots having a mid-air battle with a massive armored tank on a floating ship! It was being toted as a low-budget student film for a GM college student’s final thesis, but Gathermoon was in on it as his producer.

Renee was most happy because it got her out of moving violation, even if she was already dreading the next time into Officer McCoy... but by the time she got the city the “robot battle” was over, the suspended ship and giant robot out of sight. They just... disappeared. Some outlets were saying that they drifted out of bounds of the colony limits to land in the desert. Others were saying they crashed, but no one was reported hurt. The Gathermoon office was tight-lipped on all fronts other than “it’s for a movie.”

She would have been lying if she said she wasn’t a _little_ disappointed that the action finished before she could get up close. It wasn’t everyday that you got to see something like that. People online were saying that the armature footage on WeTube did the real event no justice. Meanwhile, Gathermoon’s political opponents were denouncing the display for being too close to the city without proper permits— standard for politicians to get worked up over that kind of thing. Their government would never allow something that was _really_ that unsafe to take place near Neotopia Tower, right? Those missiles were probably just holograms. Probably.

Renee parked her truck in her apartment complex’s garage and spent the rest of the day tinkering with the undercarriage. Then she got hungry and started a hike to the nearest UC Mart for junk food.

She was at a stoplight at 9:33 when the GM next to her at the crosswalk turned to look at her. 

“Did you hear something?” she asked, seconds before another GM launched himself at her back and _slammed something down on top of her head_ _._

The same UC Mart she was heading towards was the one that ultimately served as refuge. Two hours into the siege, the store had also become a haven for several others. As the streets cleared of people and the mind-controlled robots started a lengthy march towards _wherever,_ the power went out. Not even the television worked anymore, which had been broadcasting BREAKING NEWS coverage across the city. The only light that still functioned was the slushy machine _(why?)_ and a single streetlamp across the road on the corner of Kai’s Koffee. There were eight of them total in the store, all human.

The cashier who let Renee in had a nametag that read _Isabella Zingel_. There was also a young boy and someone who might have been his grandfather, an older gentleman with one of those stickers on his right breast: _Hello, My Name Is Gerald_ _._ The four of them sat crouched behind the cash register counter. On the other side of the mart in the aisles was nerdy looking woman with Glasses, a second woman in a pantsuit with a fancy Lawyer briefcase, a teenager with a Skateboard tucked under his arm, and a business man with an Atlus Industries pin. No one asked each other their names. It was one of those situations where taking time to make pleasantries was out of the question.

Renee imagined her “name” to everyone else there was Cyclops.

As the parade of marching robots in the street thinned out, Glasses peered out from behind the candy display into window. She was crammed into the far corner, sitting on the floor with the rack in front of her as a shield. A nasty bruise was forming across the side of her head in the low light, in a suspicious square shape. A GM gone mad had clocked her something fierce. “I think they’re going towards Neotopia Tower.”

“Of course they are.” Atlus Pin said. He was in the next aisle, not daring to look outside. He was urgently fiddling with his phone. A no go— coverage was down for Renee’s phone too. “This is the part where the robots take over.”

“Don’t be fucking insensitive.” That was the Lawyer. She was holed up next to Atlus Pin looking more and more disgusted by the second. She clung to that briefcase like a child to a stuffed toy. “My firm’s senior attorney got hitched with one of those horn things. One second he was fine, then one of those flying robots put it on his head and he went _crazy_. This isn’t their fault.”

Renee hadn’t seen the flying ones yet. She had been so focused on avoiding rampaging GMs on the ground, she never bothered to look _up_. The television in the store talked about them up until the power went out, but she was in a position where looking up at the screen was impossible.

“Language, please.” Isabella said. The cashier looked worse than all of them combined. Blood on her arms complimented the broken window closest to the register and red dotting the floor. Someone must have gotten thrown through the glass at some point and she must have tried to help them. No one else was cut up, though. It must have been a GM, but there were no robots in the store. Their fate was obvious. The store’s only exit was half on its hinges from being violently ripped open from the inside, propped standing only by a stacked barricade of coffee bean bags. “There’s a kid in here.”

Gerald’s grandson, no older than seven, clung to his arm and started to cry again.

“Jesus, who the fuck takes out their _toddler_ this late at night anyways?” Atlus Guy didn’t look impressed. Renee was tempted to rename him to Asshole.

Skateboard, in the third and final aisle, made eye contact with Renee. He plucked up a dog stuffed toy from the display closest to him, glanced around the corner to make sure no robots were looking in, and slid it across the floor towards her. She immediately passed it to Gerald, who passed it to his grandson. The boy continued to sob but took the toy as a consolation regardless.

Atlus Pin hissed. The whisper was venomous as he snapped his phone shut. “Do you _want_ them to see us!? Stop moving shit!”

Renee checked her own phone. Six minutes to midnight. Her signal was cutting in and out, either because too many people trying to use the lines at once or deliberate sabotage of the reception towers. Still no way to call for help or let her folks know where she was. She... regretted walking out on the barbecue now. Even if her brother and sister were being shits— she didn’t want things to end on a bad note. Especially if she never saw them again.

(Never think never. Never think _you’re going to die.)_

“Dude, piss off.” Skateboard looked around the aisle to glare at Atlus Pin. Before Isabella could tell him to stop swearing, he continued. “They’re not coming in here after us. The GMs are being controlled to _go_ somewhere, not attack. The only people who have been beat up are the ones who got in the way.”

Glasses reached up to rub her bruise. She looked like she could cry.

“How would you know, _hoodlum?”_

“I came from Krung Threp. The university got hit hard when those spikes starting sticking all the mecha. My boyfriend texted me from the Soc-Arts section and I was trying to make my way up there before...” Skateboard stopped short. He looked disturbed.

“Before _what?”_ That was Lawyer.

“I got cut off by one of the flying mechs. The ones who are dropping the spikes in the first place.” Skateboard pulled his knees up to his chest. His face twisted past his facial hair into a grimace. “So long as you stay out of the way of the tagged mobile citizens, they won’t hurt you. But one of the flyers spotted me and forced me back with a... gun.”

Firearms were banned in Neotopia in N.C. 21, with the establishment of “Bright’s Law.” Noah Bright, captain of the _Neos One_ orbital space station and unspoken “leader” of the newfound colony of Neotopia, shot himself with his own handgun. There was no suicide note, no goodbye of any kind to his fellow Founders. His death was unprompted, and he never once set foot on the new colony he was helping to build. The decision to ban guns came with little pushback. Maybe the Founders and early settlers remembered more about the conflict on Earth than they wanted to let on. Then again, maybe everyone was just tired of death. Guns were for killing, and Earth once had a human population over ten billion. Now there was less than ten thousand of them. All the rest were gone.

No one wanted anyone else to die.

“They’re not from Neotopia,” Gerald said.

“Aliens? I always knew Krung Threp was a drug den— the rest of you honestly don’t _believe_ this, do you?”

“We’re aliens, too,” Gerald said. He hugged his grandson closer. “This planet was never ours.”

“What did they look like?” Renee asked. She leaned further around the corner to try and get closer to Skateboard. “The flying robots.”

“You didn’t see them?” Glasses asked. Something must’ve caught her eye, because she suddenly craned her head to look out the window again.

“I kept my head down the whole run over here. Couldn’t see the TV from this spot, either.”

“Think shark-head with a fighter plane body. Like the ones they built in the Old World.” Skateboard paused, then made an O shape with both hands laced together at the fingertips. “One optic, too.”

Glasses gasped, a hoarse and horrified whisper. “Oh shit! _Shit!_ _”_

There was the sound of an engine misfire. Renee knew right away what it was because she _knew_ that sound from working in a garage her whole life. Nothing critical, but a machine was overworking itself. Everyone else must have mistaken it for gunfire, though, because they cringed and ducked low. The grandson started to cry again. Lawyer dropped her briefcase.

Isabella’s voice was a strangled squeak. “What was...?”

Glasses hurriedly tucked herself into the corner as far as she could go, desperately putting a finger up to her lips. Behind the glasses frames, her eyes were wild. Heavy sweat started to bead across her skin, blooming terror.

 _Turbines_ fired outside the store now, followed by the sound of heavy footfalls as they wound down. Metal pedes stepping across asphalt was a sound ingrained into all their memories, but these strides were different. Not a mindless, zombified march. A slow approach, cautious. Renee had less than five seconds to move all the way behind the counter when she saw everyone else in the store scrambling to relocate. Atlus Pin and Lawyer shuffled all the way back to hide behind the end racks. Skateboard jumped across his aisle to cram himself behind the slushy machine. Glasses managed to push herself further behind the display with only her leg sticking out. She covered it with her jacket as a hurried afterthought.

The street lamp shining outside was suddenly casting a long shadow into the store.

Isabella squeezed her eyes shut and moved her hands over her mouth. She stopped breathing. Gerald gripped the back of his grandson’s head and pulled him close.

The door was forced open. Glass shattered as the already broken frame pressed against the barricade of coffee beans. The door was completely broken and made to fall forward. There was a startled engine rev, the subtle scream of overworked cooling fans. Finally, the sound of a heavy machine stepping over the door into the darkness of the UC Mart.

Something stepped inside.

Renee chanced a look.

That was when she saw her first Dark Axis doga bomber.

 **ii**

**September 10th, N.C. 286**

 

She didn’t dream. She woke up with a start and a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling on an unfamiliar bed. “Shit.”

The sun hadn’t come up yet. Dawn teased itself through the blinds on the windows, bare without curtains to frame them, but that was all. That faint light struggled through the sea of tree branches beyond the frosted glass. Autumn was early. She slowly sat up and felt the chill of it push past her skin and enter her body bone deep. The day before had been so warm that she didn’t turn the AC off. She rubbed her arms and surveyed. Not even the few items she had mounted on the walls could save the barren space from mocking her. It was too alien. The unknown stared at her with an instillation of sterilized fear. This cold _hole_ wasn’t a home. It was a den of lurking terror.

“Shit,” Renee said again.

The clock on the wall told a miserable story. It was a whole two hours before she was scheduled to go into work, but she wasn’t going to wait. Her nerves were frayed and set alight even in the frigid space. She got up and grimaced at the cold floor. She didn’t even bother to shower, either. As nice as hot water would feel, the drive to _leave_ had a stronger pull. She mused her hair into an acceptable shape minus the one cowlick that refused to go down. Nevermind, she would fix it at the garage under a hose if she had to. The mechanic grabbed her backpack, still half packed with stuff she neglected to take out the night before. She peered out the door when the electric-lock was disabled. No sense in shocking herself. She didn’t need a hundred volts to wake herself more than she already was.

The hallway was empty. The door leading into Tango’s room was closed. She tiptoed out and made her way towards the stairs.

_How do you even know he’s still in there?_

“Shit.” She was getting tired of hearing herself on repeat. Renee looked back at the door. There was no sign of disturbance, but how would she have been able to tell anyways? There were no pictures on the wall to get knocked askew if a robot walked by. The Axian wasn’t quite large enough to leave noticeable scuffs if he shimmied sideways, too. maneuvering him down the hall was only difficult when two frustrated SDG GMs were trying to drag a third, unresponsive robot down with them. The scuffs they left were quickly painted over by the cleanup team. The hallway was clean and there was no sign that anyone…

Renee had moved towards the door before she could stop herself. She had already draped her leather jacket on the stairwell banister so she could have a free hand. Her fingers lingered over the handle with the threat of being burned. Her heart was beating in her ears. She gripped the knob with a slicked hand and turned the handle.

Peering inside yielded a _sight_ , for sure. The mattress wasn’t on the ground anymore. Not that she had expected him to use it, but it was the kind of courteous commodity that felt _right_ to leave for him. The mattress was now propped up on its side and leaning against the wall. A wing was sticking out on one side. Tango had walled himself into the corner behind it. He didn’t move. Good. She wouldn’t have to see him.

The thought made her a little sad. Why was she so _relieved_ about that?

She didn’t bother making breakfast— she could grab a donut and coffee from the consignment shop down the street. The longer she lingered in the house was a reminder about what lurked upstairs.

That was when it finally occurred to her what was _really_ bothering her. Tango had been safe when he was confined. She was never truly alone with him during their time together at Blanc Base: not with so many SDG agents around. Not when Tango was _restrained_. Now he was roaming with relative freedom inside the same space as her. There were no security cameras. The only thing keeping the Axian in relative confinement was the security bolt (did it even work?) and whatever tracking device they plugged into him.

She thought about the doga bomber she met in the UC Mart in June.

When she finally got out of the house, she made a break for the car. The familiar orange pickup was a safehaven in an unknown territory she had no dominion over. It was still dark. She cut across the yard to get to the driver side door faster. Fresh dew splashed onto her pants lets and soaked through the socks of her trainers. She slammed the door, struggled to get the key in the ignition, and mentally _screamed_ when the engine didn’t immediately turn over. Her heart was palpitating. Her head throbbed. She was beading with sweat and she couldn’t stop shaking. When the engine caught she almost forgot to throw the car into reverse. The tires squeaked as she yanked backwards out of the driveway. An early morning jogger shouted at her from across the street. The SDG owned firm that ran that particular safehouse would get a letter in the mail from the HOA, for sure.

It wasn’t until she was halfway down the road that she realized she had forgotten her jacket on the stairwell. The garage was _freezing_ in the mornings, especially with fall incoming. She was going to be miserable— more than she already was.

It wasn’t until she got the first stop sign at the end of the cul-de-sac of Metonomy Lane that she had a chance to catch her breath. She breathed deeply, sitting in place for so long that a car that came up behind her politely beeped its horn. Renee put her hazards on and waved them past.

The woman driving rolled down her window next to her. She was older with her hair in one of those Let Me Speak To Your Manager bob cuts. Despite that, she flashed a friendly smile and spoke with a gentle coo. “Are you alright, sweetheart?”

Renee said she was.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She said no— it was something worse.

“Probably just a little wood spider, dear. We get them all the time in this community. Just be glad you’re not that new woman on the news that took in that Axian, recently.” The lady leaned towards Renee, out of her driver’s seat towards the passenger side. “You saw the SDG press conference yesterday, didn't you? Can you imagine waking up to _that_ in your house the morning? What an absolute terror. I would be mortified.”

Renee stared. She kept staring up until the woman bid her a lovely morning and drove off in her fancy little Bandai Pocket. The truck idled for so long at the stop sign that it stalled.

“Shit,” Renee whined. She faceplanted into the top of her steering wheel. The sensor inside was jarred only barely, and without warning the horn blasted. She shrieked and shot up, smashing her head on the roof of the cabin.

 **iii**  

Tango hadn’t recharged well, either.

Well, on the contrary, he _had_ recharged well. Too well. He was so well charged from being in stasis lock the day before, he was out for less than an hour and spent the rest of the time just... standing there. The sun on this planet was quickly becoming the Worst thing he had ever experienced on any invasion-destination planet too, short enough as that time was already. When he arrived via Deathscythe’s warp with the other members of his flock, Gerbera via Zako Red’s proxy was already waiting for them. Base camp for the mission was stationed in the forest outside the colony’s boundaries, just under radar where they could amass unseen. They used it for less than a day before they got the signal to fly. With such a large number of soldiers hiding in enemy territory, stealth was innately important to the operation. The woods were cramped with trees, grass, and other _foliage_ that made up the biosphere. The damper pieces stuck to your armor and the smell of flora _rot_ was revolting to the point of nausea.

But Neotopia’s sun? Being only two percent brighter than the sun on Solardiorama was enough to make him miss Ark and Lacroa. Which was _obscene. Those places were awful._ The fact that Neotopia managed to be worse was good signal he would be in for a rough adjustment.

There came a time that morning where his body wouldn’t let him stay even half-powered down any longer. Tango was nearly at a full charge when he settled in for the night anyways, but the fear of waking his warden made him stay put. Pacing when you were top heavy on a hard surface was out of the question. His pedes clicked on the floor. Worse still, his “parental lock” kept him from accessing the internet after a certain time. It was a simultaneous relief _and_ drain when he found the wifi lock lifted and the sun forcing him into an active state. He shoved the mattress away from him but failed to catch it before it tumbled to the floor. The resounding THUMP made him freeze.

Silence. Surely the human was awake by now, right? Surely he hadn’t disturbed her...

He stuck his head out of the room when she didn’t come to investigate the sound. “Renee?”

There was no answer. When he got the staircase, he was met with a familiar sight: Renee’s leather jacket was hanging on the thin wood railing, scrunched haphazardly. He gingerly picked it up and gripped it in his servo. On one hand it was a relief. The last time she had left it with him, it was done as a reassuring gesture. It meant she was coming back. A thermal scan revealed the entire home was empty, with Renee no where on the premises—

“YOU!” He flared his optic at the intruder. “Identify yourself immediately! You are not an intended resident of this facility!”

The tiny arthropod, an arachnid, continued its rapid scuttle across the floor. By the time he maneuvered himself down the stairwell to confront the trespasser, it had already crammed itself under the main door and out of sight. Not for long! Tango hissed and reached out for the door—

He stopped short, his hand hovering.

_No leaving._

The doga bomber backed up, staring at the door. An x-ray of its components revealed that the mechanism was unlocked. It wasn’t armed with an EMP or alarm system of any kind. He could just… walk out. Exit. _Escape_. All at once, the worst part of his new prison was clear to him. He had the ability to leave but not the _capacity_. Of _course_ the SDG knew they could put him in a frail wooden box and expect him to still stay— where else would he go? His flight array was still online but he had no access to fuel, weapons, or any means to contact the Dark Axis. They wouldn’t retrieve him regardless! He was a grunt who was meant to die the second contact with Professor Gerbera was cut off. He was defective in the sense that he wasn’t even able to carry out his final mission, to kill himself. Then he got captured.

He had nothing to go to. No _reason_ to leave.

Tango backed away from the door, as if it would attack.

There was no place for him on this colony. Even as Renee said, this setup was temporary. At some point the dwelling would be turned back over to the rightful owners in the SDG. They needed this base for other uses. It couldn’t be a prison forever. _Renee_ couldn’t be there forever, either. What would ultimately happen to him? Prisoners required maintenance, so useless ones were disposed of in the Dark Axis once their worth ended. Renee had already reassured him once that no such thing would happen to him, but how true could that be? In what way could they ever hope to incorporate him into…?

Tango kept backing away from the door until he bumped into the staircase. He shouted and yanked himself away at the unexpected contact. The space was suddenly too small for him. His wings were too wide and whacked hard into the railing of the staircase. They slammed into the wall behind him when he tried to whirl back around. He felt like he was overheating. His fans started to spin into overdrive. Sunlight coming through the windows worked with a greenhouse effect, heating the space while his body worked to cool down. He began to bead condensation.

Tango turned off his visual suite and stood there in silence, clutching the leather jacket close.

At the very least darkness was a voluntary prison. It was also so much less terrifying.

**iv**

Bonnie whistled at her as she walked in. Her visor flashed, playful. “You look like shit, Renee.”

“Thanks! I’m glad you noticed.”

Al’s Garage & Ice Cream Parlor was the kind of business that had more mechanical staff than not. Sometimes they had temporary workers, teens who were out of school for the summer and wanted something fun to do for a few hours in the day... but for the most part? The main cast remained unchanged in all the years she had worked there. Eight talented automotive-repair specialist GMs, with their “mascot” human on the side. All of them were as good with a wrench as they were with waffle cones— _very_.

Tabby was nicer to her. The femme had already made her a coffee. “Heavy on the creamer. Welcome back, Renee.”

“God, I missed this place. Blanc Base is fun and all, but you guys...”

“Aww. We missed you, too.”

It hadn’t set out to be that way, though: both regarding the human-to-mecha ratio and the addition of the ice cream parlor attached. The repair shop was cobbled together to make up for the lack of decent shops in the area, founded by Al shortly after he left his host family to start living on his own. Renee had no idea how old Al himself was, but the shop was pushing seventy years old and opened at a time where they were still some... tensions. Al had a hard time finding human workers who didn’t have “reservations” about taking orders from a GM at the time. It was a different era. Robots were full citizens, but old prejudices lingered. Sometimes there was vandalism. Al could only trust other robots. It was no wonder that there was an old room in the back that once served as a safehouse for the Steel Roses, the mecha civil rights “bandits” of the decade.

B4-12, usually shy and reserved, practically vaulted himself over a workbench and ran across the shop at her. Renee was halfway through the warm coffee and barely avoided spilling it on the young GM’s head. The hug was a strong one.

“Before Twelve was worried about you,” Hodges said. He saw she was missing her leather jacket and handed her a hoodie.

“I was with the SDG. I was fine, really.”

“You haven’t been watching the news, then.”

As time went on, and temperaments changed, the shop received a modest clientele. Then when Al noticed that the hot summer months brought unhappy families sweltering in the heat while the family van got fixed, the ice cream bar was added. It was an instant hit with customers. The garage expanded. Pretty soon Al had a three-car fleet of AI-transfer trucks, a full staff, and a long list of regulars that came in from all across the city. They only ever had one human staff member, though. Which was unfortunate, because the garage was frigid and Renee didn’t bring her goddamn favorite jacket.

She walked into Al’s office to find him and Cooper looking over some papers. Both looked up at the same time with matching shocked stances. After working with GMs for so long, the blank visors stopped registering. You looked for other cues like posture and subtle changes in their voice codecs. On the wall behind her as she entered the office, she could hear the news playing. She didn’t dare look.

 _“The death toll continues to rise today in the wake of last week’s attack, with_ _approximately_   _eighty-nine people confirmed—”_

“Renee! You’re here!” Al stood up, immediately squeezing around his new desk to meet her. The hug wasn’t as firm as Before Noon’s, but Al was an older model. Sometimes his joints didn’t bend in as far. “You’re a one-eyed menace I’m _glad_ to see.”

She flinched at that. Back in June, she would’ve chuckled. Now...? “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? Sorry I’m early, I had to get out of the house. Apartment. I had to get out of the _apartment...”_

“You disappeared off the SDG roster. We weren’t sure if something happened to you!” Cooper immediately walked around and hugged her next. He offered a thump on her lower back as he pulled away. Like Al, he was an older model and sometimes struggled with higher reaches. Injures sustained during the first Dark Axis invasion also weren’t treating him well...

(The old Steel Roses hideout behind the wall had been a saving grace for the staff that avoided the control horns. Quentin, Hodges, B4-12, and Cooper were working the late shift when Al was tagged. The horn stuck him while he was working on a junker in the outside lot. Al went after Cooper first with a tire iron while he was doing insurance forms in the office. Al cleaved his old desk in two when he slammed Cooper down on top of it by the arm. Cooper barely got away to hide with the others in the saferoom. Al they spent the greater part of the evening trying to claw his way past their barricade.)

“Is everyone checking that thing now?” Renee felt her insides lurch, thinking about her brother and _Jake_. “I mean it, I’m fine!”

“It’s just— after all that shit with the dogas…” Al shook his head. He was shuffling back around his desk again in the tight space. “It’s been such a nightmare down here colonyside, Renee. You missed a lot.”

She froze. “Is everyone…?”

“Everyone here at the garage is fine. No casualties, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Al sat back down, hovering over his forums and datapads. “We’re busy as hell with a lot of destroyed cars that are barely even salvageable for _parts_.”

“I didn’t see that many—”

“They’re all in the back. We’re trying to tackle them a few at a time so we don’t get overwhelmed.” Cooper’s voice was a nervous twitter. “Clients are hoping for the best, but there’s only been so much that we can do. So many of the cars we got were flat out _nailed_ by the doga bombers.”

“Don’t even say what they’re called,” Al said, and that was the end of it. No one dared argue with him. Very few GMs liked to talk about what it was _like_ after they got hitched back in June. The few that did talked about unbelievable rage, hinted at the kind of darkness you never wanted to find yourself in ever again. Captain Gundam had saved each of them individually, but there was no saving them from the fact it still happened.

You could get saved from a burning building, but you were still covered in burns that never quite healed.

True to word, while the floor of the main garage was mostly clear, the back lot was a disaster. All five drive-in lots behind the main stations were filled with queues that went back twenty cars each. Each were visibly damaged in some capacity, and were the ones that looked like they could be saved. Some were minimally damaged, ranging from dings to deep dents where debris struck them. A lot of those same ones had a fine layer of dust from buildings that collapsed. Others were smashed to the point where salvage might not have been possible, but they were sure as hell going to try.

Then there was the junkyard. Renee had never seen it so jam packed with inventory, _overflowing_ with total losses. Vans sheared straight in two, impossibly crushed compacts, and charred wrecks dotted the landscape. Each was flagged with different signs to help identify them from a distance. Crushed windshields, twisted fenders, smashed framework that caved so far in from the roof...

“Where do you want me to start?” Renee asked.

“Wherever the hell you want,” Al said. Then, as an afterthought. “Welcome back, kid.”

**v**

Gerbera could have _very_ easily created an army of flat-out brutes, but the Professor was a scientist. Rather than create an army that was flat out as overpowered as a nightmare like _Nightingale_ , he assembled his ranks in different tiers. The reason for that was obvious when you looked at who the Professor was as a person. He wasn’t a bruiser himself (although Tango had a sneaking suspicion that he could hold his own in a fight), but he was calculating. An explorer’s personality demanded a prowess of curiosity, and the Professor instilled that in his Axians tenfold. Zakos could be effective foot-soldiers with a gun, but individually they were also highly inquisitive. Small enough to sneak into enemy bases undetected, capable of condensing communication relays to the rest of the horde to share their discoveries. As pathetic as they were in a fight, they could be master spies in the right setting. Many Dark Axis invasions were possible only _with_ the data collected by zako soldiers. Banhollow, Voxvale, Lacroa...

Commanders were also not exempt from this mode of non-violent nature. Gerbera actually _rarely_ oversaw invasions and allowed the invasion Fold to work unimpeded. Rather than charge straight into a full-scale attack, Commanders preferred organizing data-gathering missions first. Commander Nightingale herself staked Lacroa out for _more than ten years_ before committing to a first proper attack. Her favorite mode of inter-dimensional exploration had been through the optics of doga bombers. Capable of defending themselves, masters of extended missions into the unknown.

While doga bombers were the primary offensive force in an aerial setting, they were also used as long-range scouts. Zakos hardly had the naneuverability and speed to cover large distances, and invasions were seldom _small_. It paid in dividends to have a wide understanding of your enemy’s territory. Patrol squads were utilized in places like Lacroa and Ark, but not for Neotopia. The colony was very small compared to the worlds they usually focused on… no such patrols were deemed necessary by Commander Sazabi. Gerbera had also seemed confident of the colony’s layout, despite never being there before…

Tango was much more familiar with exploration than combat. Even in Lacroa, he had been sent on a long-range scouting flight! That was actually the _best_ time to be on far-reaching patrols, because most everything was already petrified. There wasn’t anyone or anything left to sneak up on you, take you out of the sky and make you a lost asset. He could just... fly. In a straight line into the horizon, relaying weather and petrification data to the _Black Musai_ Horn of War. He _liked_ those missions. They were calming. You had the sky to yourself.

The house that the SDG had holed him in was starting to feel cramped, thinking about the open air. Claustrophobia was settling in again like it had at Blanc Base. He had to calm himself down, so Tango did what made him calmest: he explored.

(It put him in his element, and the least he could do now was explore the layout of his— what was it? Cage?)

(No, not a cage. Cages weren’t supposed to be nice. This was... nice, he thought? Maybe? He had no frame of reference to use but nothing was trying to shoot him or tear his innards out.)

(Yeah, this _had_ to be nice.)

No need to explore the upstairs. He had already seen it all minus the established off-limits zones. The spare bedroom and his bedroom were entirely empty. Renee’s room and one of the bathrooms that he was warned about the day before were out of bounds. Downstairs had much more ground to cover. At the bottom of the staircase was the foyer that branched off in four separate directions from the main entrance. _Left_ brought you into a side room with a wood table. _Right_ landed you in an even larger room with a decorated furnace space, fabric lined seating arrangement, and a table with a bizarre fixture. This was the same room he and Renee had their “house meeting” in before. There was also a black monitor mounted on the wall. For receiving orders from higher human authority? A possibility. Neotopia didn’t strike him as an authoritarian state, but he had been wrong about human culture before… a switch on the wall ignited flames inside the “fireplace.” A second switch made the item on the side table light up. He jumped as it cast a shadow. Oh! A light fixture.

He moved onto the kitchen, accessible from the foyer and the living room. This was where humans made their meals. It was similar to the kitchens he had seen in Lacroa, though there wasn’t a cauldron in sight. Tango treaded carefully, opening all the cabinets to gage what was hiding inside. Boxes with markings he couldn’t read, flat ceramic discs and bowls, plastic containers… the height made it a little awkward to get a good look at the top shelves. He was as tall as the average Gundam, but most humans still stood taller than four-foot-something. Renee had at least ten inches on him.

The largest electronic in the room made a sound that made him startle worse than the light fixture had. He whirled around, optic flared, flinching when his wings whacked into a cabinet. Thankfully he had the state of mind to close it beforehand, otherwise the door would have been smacked right off the hinges. He raised his arms to defend himself. The “refrigerator” must have determined he was a viable threat, because it silenced itself quickly. Tango approached, careful. It had a handle and he pulled the door open with caution.

Cold air and blatant carbon material! This must have been Renee’s perishable fuel storage. He suspected many of the boxes in the cabinets also stored consumable fuel, but there was no way to get a good look inside without tampering. Here, food was on open display and easy to identify. He stood there for a moment enjoying the low temperature before poking his head in further. He wasn’t intending to disturb anything— he was only trying to get a closer look. Part of the strategy of the Dark Axis was to petrify large food sources as well as organic denizens themselves, so Tango had never actually _seen_ what it was that humans consumed.

What caught him most by surprise was the reaction his olfactory sensors had. A container of white liquid that smelled absolutely _foul_ , a second container that smelled slightly better, a tub of _something_ that had an even better odor, and—

This one thing smelled the best of _all,_ and he grabbed it before he could stop himself. A ridged carton of some kind made from paper material. Whatever was in there had his sensors pinging unique data back to him, more than even the drawers full of fruit and meat products. He took it out, closed the fridge, and placed it on the counter to continue his investigation. What w _as_ it? He adjusted his sensor net to scan the item, opening his analysis-center to display on his HUD.

He found a clasp and opened it. Inside, twelve rounded objects sat in individual cells to taunt him. Stained a shade lighter than Renee’s own skintone with no hard edges in sight. The odor was even stronger, even _better_. Any intent he had not to disturb this item beyond briefly removing it from the fridge was abandoned. There was no desire to do a backwards image search and determine what the item was from a distance. He wanted to obtain the data for identification _himself_. He reached down to pick one of the—

_Crack!_

Tango jerked his hand back as if he had been burned. The shell was too thin and he broke it! Panicked, he made another scan. The objects were hollow with organic material inside. They were incredibly thin. The shell he had broken still rested inside the container, but a thick opaque ooze was leaking free and filling the rest of the container cell. The doga bomber readjusted his grip parameters and tried again.

“Seriously!?” Tango broke the next item too! This time the crack was deeper. More of that ooze, but this time it got on his digits. Ice cold to the touch, and not even enough for a decent chemical analysis. He revved, agitated, readjusting again…

Third time was the ticket. This time he was able to pick the item up, letting it gently roll into his palm. He adjusted his optic apertures to scan the surface and magnify his vision. The exterior pinged back as a nintey-six percent calcium carbonate with microscopic holes, held together with a protein matrix. He attempted a deeper scan but found himself being driven to distraction. The smell from the two broken shells still n the container was treating his sensors... well. So well, in fact, that his mind was wandering. He turned the oval shaped object in his hand, running additional scans halfheartedly, trying to determine if it was safe to

_eat._

The thought caught him off guard. Without permissions, he felt his jaw plate unlatching and a momentary wave of panic. He hadn’t given the signal to do that! A foreign line of code usually concealed beneath his self-preservation driver compelled him to shove the item inside. His emergency hatch snapped shut before he could stop. He arched his head back and let the item roll down his gullet into his compactor. The blades and diamond-tip grinders smashed it to pieces.

Data came back to him. Taste. _Delicious_.

His optic dilated further. The self-lubricating mechanism in his maw activated at full throttle. His jaw unhinged a second time without permission. The rest of the items went down, carton included.

He abandoned the kitchen in before he could feel compelled to do anything _else_ just as horrifying. Hopefully Renee wouldn’t notice the missing items...

Back to the “living room.” The electric fire place spewed modest flames into the chimney flume above. While pleasant to stand in front of, it staring at it offered nothing of educational merit. An attempt was then made to activate the monitor on the wall. No luck there: even when an internet search revealed that humans used it for entertainment, no verbal commands would activate it. He debated hacking it and decided not to. Renee had been upset with him when he plugged into her phone without express permission to access its data. The television was larger and therefore likely more important.

Unfortunately, explorative as Axians were, there was a strange expression the Professor would use when describing Axians killed during recon: “curiosity killed the cat.” He had never seen a cat until looking them up in Neotopia, but he knew what Gerbera meant in the statement. Being too curious often times got soldiers into trouble. How many dogas and zakos had been killed by spirit beasts during the near decade Nightingale had them exploring Lacroa? A lot, most likely. Way more than a lot. Hundreds. So many _things_ in Lacroa were dangerous without first appearing to be. Tango heard horror stories. Lakeside lagoons home to beasts that stalked below the water’s surface. Caves with stalking creatures. Literal piles of garbage from ruined villages that lunged upwards and snatched unsuspecting robots straight out of the air...

Tango never suspected that something so dangerous could exist as a lampshade.

He went to pick up the light fixture from earlier, turning it over in his servos. It was a strange looking device, for sure. The top portion had a thin fabric lined frame covering the bulb itself, diluting the light. Odd— didn’t humans _like_ when their enviorment was bright? Against his better judgment, he tried to remove the shade. No such luck: there was no way to remove it without severely damaging it. A quick internet search revealed that these things could somehow be unscrewed from the frame. Surely it would make more sense if he took it off, right? There was no logic for a human to have an ineffective light source. He turned the lamp on its side and wedged the nose of his helm into the base to get a better look. There! He found the screw and reached around to loosen it. He was able to turn it with his digits without damaging the screw, pulling it free. The lamp stand came free from the shade. He pulled the lamp away—

The shade stayed on his head.

“Uh oh.”

He set the lamp down on the table with a blind hand, then reached up with both servos to pry the shade loose. The item held fast. The tug pulled on his helmet, the frame _caught_ on something.

“Ooh no. No, no.”

He tried to pull out. Wrapping his fingers around the top open rim of the shade, he swung his optic wide in all directions. He was blinded on all sides. Straight forward, his suicide-guard obscured his vision naturally. He was blind. Pulling on the shade again, he was able to feel where it caught. His “mask” had a lip further along the back of his helm, and the thin frame of the shade was caught on it. A test pull with more strength made the frame groan. He immediately let go. No! He couldn’t _break_ it!

Tango shook his head to try and jar it free. Nothing. He tried again, accidentally knocked his foot into the table with the shade, and scared himself so good that he leapt backwards into the wall behind him. He scrambled and worked himself into a corner. He stood there for a minute, then shook again. The shade didn’t budge.

He was _stuck._

“Oh,” he said miserably, and stood there for nine hours in silence.

 **vi**  

Al tapped her on the leg while she worked on the undercarriage of an abused mom’s van. Fire damage had weakened the frame, but not to the point of junking. Renee slid out and squinted as her eyes adjusted. “Yeah?”

“Got a Special Customer for you,” he said. The low, biting undertone to his voice spoke volumes. He was reliving his heyday when the racists used to come into the shop just to harass him. “She won’t talk to the rest of us.”

Maybe the term was wrong by definition, but the negative implications of _racism_ fit like a glove. There were many different skin tones among humans in Neotopia, and their ethnic identities survived the amnesiac-wipe the Founders implemented. According to her dad, having so many different kinds of people in the same place would have been a point of starting confrontation back on Earth. The Old World, for all its niceties, had a dark side _beyond_ its destruction. Wars started by religion, territory disputes, and racial creed were common. While most of that dark history was lost, one story stood out: a country known as the United States of America once segregated blacks and whites. Different water fountains, different schools, and different seats on the bus. Interracial marriage was illegal.

Renee, horrified, asked her dad _why_.

He didn’t have an answer.

Borderline extinction must have united them, because racial disturbances were non-existent in Neotopia: at least for human relations. Sometimes religious spats were obvious, but no one was ever mobbed for being the wrong skin color if you walked down the street. That having been said, mecha were not so fortunate in the colony’s early days. Shortly after the robot rights movement started, harassment and name-calling were rampant. GMs were kicked out of stores and other businesses if they weren't shopping for a human who _owned_ them. They were denied housing, voting rights, and basic privileges Renee never realized she took for granted. Robots who acted “too human” were accused of trying to be something they weren’t, something they would never be. _“Machines can never be people.”_

“The Steel Roses and their organized protests were a necessity. The perfect hybrid of King’s nonviolence philosophies and the sheer tenacity of Newton’s Black Panthers,” John Clarke said.

The truth was that Neotopia had once been far from perfect. While the Steel Roses helped pave way for mecha to be considered equal, lingering animosities remained. Corporations like Atlus Industries _still_ tried to get away with exploiting robot employees to work longer hours. District clerks would sometimes “lose” marriage certificates, only for them to magically reappear when distraught human-robot couples threatened to bring in lawyers. Very old people would walk into a buisness, realize it was mech-run, and walk right back out. Insults like “toaster” and “tin man” cut deep.

The woman in the waiting lounge wasn’t elderly at all, and actually seemed to be _younger_ than Renee. That was rare, if she was as Special as Al implied. Then again, she had a presence that was entirely too serious. The fresh haircut was the culprit. A straight short bob with sharp bangs that went straight across. Renee realized she still had a damn cowlick and instinctively reached up to smooth it down. “Hi! You must be...?”

The woman startled and turned to look at her. She remained seated and stared. Renee was hoping she would perk up once she saw another human, but they locked gazes instead. Her eyes were black pits. Her nails dug into her purse strap with enough force to leave crescent indents. She had a bronze clasp around her wrist, accented by a beautiful amethyst.

“You only have one eye.” It wasn’t a question. A flat statement, punctuated by a hard voice.

Bonnie at the reception desk looked mortified. Regardless, Renee still tried to be polite. “Yeah! Working with heavy machinery, am I right? The perks are great, but _man_ they can make you short-sighted if you’re not careful...”

The joke was bad, and the response was worse. The woman’s face was impassive. “A robot did that to you.”

Bonnie cringed.

“Oh god, no! No, no, no…” Renee held up both hands. “Oh, sorry! I was joking about the heavy machinery part! I got hurt when I was little. Another boy in my grade, I promise. I’ve never been hurt by a robot.”

“You’re fortunate,” the woman said, and finally stood up.

Her name was Molly. She had an older model blue compact Bowa Haman, with no advanced features. Renee was actually thrilled to see another non-antigrav car like her truck. Fancy mods were nice, but the retro models had a certain charm to them. It was a shame it wasn’t in better shape: the tires were all sorts of messed up, and the undercarriage was beat to hell. According to the woman, the engine light had come on that same morning. Renee took her ID and registration but kept her eye on Molly the whole time. Rather than wait in the lounge, the woman hovered. It was a tradition in the shop, letting owners onto the floor to watch repairs if they wanted to learn for themselves how their vehicle worked: anoher practice that made the garage popular, besides the ice cream. Still, Renee wished she would go away. The way she was staring at her was making her nervous. She plugged her tablet into the Haman’s computer to let it run a diagnostic. Then she put the car on a lift to do a more in-depth check of the undercarriage.

“She’s looking pretty dinged up,” Renee said, finally getting the opportunity to look more closely at the undercarriage. “Did you go off-roading recently? Age can corrode a lot of these older parts, but there looks like there’s been a lot of recent chipping.”

“No.” The woman was watching her like a hawk. “What is your opinion of robots?”

Renee nearly pinched her finger between a corroded axle and a connecting piece, digging out a rock. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re the only human in this place.” Molly turned her head. “You seem to have a good relationship with these machines.”

The way that she said _machine_ was uncomfortable. She thought about Al and his struggles first opening the shop. Then she thought about her dad. Finally, almost out of nowhere, she thought about Tango. She wondered how he was doing, what he would do to keep himself entertained for the rest of the day while she was away. Was he okay? Should she have left a note saying that she was—

The tablet dinged. Renee walked over to the stand where he was set up, checking the report. P0440 and P0300 were both glagged. “It doesn’t bother me. Everyone here is my friend!” Renee flashed her best winning smile and hoped it was convincing. The woman was a stone faced as before. “Al is great. So is Copper, Fusebox, Hodges, Minnie, Bonnie... looks like you have low fuel pressure and multiple cylinder misfires. I bet I know what happened. Should be an easy fix and you can be on your way.”

“And the Axians?”

The way she said _Axians_ made Renee feel worse. She felt her flesh break out into goosebumps, her hand stand up on end. She thought about Tango again, and wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact this woman was starting to scare her, the fact she was starting to _worry_ about Tango, or the fact that having an Axian in her house didn’t bother her as much as this woman did. She returned to the underside of the car with a replacement pressure valve. “I don’t know what to think. They’re not like the robots we have in Neotopia, but there’s so much we _don’t_ know about them.”

“Would you forgive ever them for what they did? Both times?”

The First Invasion and Second Invasion. Renee hesitated, briefly opting to focus on her job for the time being. She swtched out the valves to adjust fuel pressure, causing the pipes to audibly groan in relief. A bump in the woman’s off-road stint had caused the old valve to malfunction and cause the low pressure warning. The tablet beeped to intricate the error had been fixed. When Renee walked out to lower the car, she could see Molly _staring_ at her. She felt like the canary about to be eaten by the cat. “To be honest? I don’t know. On one hand, what they did was awful. A lot of people were hurt. I was in the city when all the invasion in June went down. I saw the control horns, the bagu bagu swarms, and the big fight on the Horn of War. On the other hand...”

When the car was back on the ground, Renee walked around and opened the hood. She peered into the engine, saw what she was looking for right away, and reached in. She pulled out a piece of brick that had gotten wedged between a fuel line that fed into the engine. It was old, like from one of the old refineries in the outer districts. As the pressure was relieved the tablet beeped a second time. The other code was no longer registering. Renee checked the engine light and saw that it had turned off.

“On the other hand?” Molly’s voice was as dark as her eyes, her hair, her shadow looming over Renee from behind.

Renee stood up to her full height. Again, for the third time, she thought about Tango. She handed Molly the brick piece. “I have a feeling that we still don’t know enough.”

“You’re right,” Molly said. Her voice was flat. “We don’t know enough about the _enemy._ _”_

As part of the “complimentary” service that came with every repair, Renee checked the rest of the car’s utilities. She checked and topped off the oil levels, replaced the air cabin filter, and filled the tires to capacity. Then she inspected the lights. For that, she was able to get Molly back in her car and Renee felt so much _safer._ For a fourth time she thought about Tango, how she had been so eager to get out of the house away from him. Now all she could think about was getting back home, as far from Molly as she could.

_Make sure no blue Haman follows you home, too._

She walked around the back and tapped on the rear door. “I’ll check your spare and then we’ll be done.”

The hatchback trunk was empty, except for one item. The spare tire was fine, but Renee couldn’t ignore what she saw. A tire iron, bent out of shape and coated in fresh paint transfer. She picked it up n her hands, smoothed her calloused fingers across the rivets and grooves. Renee pulled it out and closed the back, holding it up to th light. Yellow and brown flecks embedded in the surface taunted her. Where had she seen those colors before? She looked at the driver’s side mirror and saw Molly staring at her with wide animal eyes.

Renee held it up. “Want me to put this on the forge and mold it back into shape? Doesn’t help if you have a warped—”

 _“_ _I don_ _’_ _t want it._ _”_ Molly, for the first time since entering the garage and meeting Renee, stopped looking at her. Her gaze went downcast. She looked pale. “Get rid of it.”

Renee ran her credit voucher, then offered her an ice cream at the parlor next door. Molly immediately declined. She snatched back her card and went to pull out of the garage. Once she pulled out, Renee watched her brake _hard_ and cause the old compact to squeal on its tires. Everyone in the shop turned to look, including the two customers that had come in since her. Renee could see her staring out her window with a hand on her mouth. She quickly accelerated away when Al started to walk up behind her. Rubber screamed on the road as she peeled away.

Renee threw the abused tire iron in the recycling compactor, then walked up behind Al. “That was awful.”

“Just when you think that generation is going to die out...” Al shook his head. “She told me she wanted a _person_ to look at her car, not an appliance.”

“I’m so sorry, Al.”

The old GM said nothing. He turned to go back into the shop. As Renee stood alone in the afternoon sun, she realized she was still holding the woman’s receipt. She uncrumpled the paper.

_Molly Thatcher._

Renee felt her throat clench. “So your mom told you everything, huh?”

Before retreating into the safety of the garage, Renee looked in the direction of whatever it was that caught Molly’s attention. There, sitting at the base of a junker heap, were the charred remains of luxury car. Creme paint bleed through fiery scars of black that licked the once pristine finish. The cardboard sign slapped on the front of the shattered windshield read COLLINS, BETHANY.

**vii**

The screen flickered with static and teased the quality at the corners. Despite that, 1080p held fast for all it was worth. The camera upgrades that came after Cobramaru’s infiltration stunt were well worth the hassle.

_“You're not leaving this room ever, I'm afraid.”_

The winged mech stared at her. The aperture of that singular optic widening made a faint whining noise. TA-N90 did not move. His body was rigid as a statue, could have been mistaken as being immobile.  _“What?”_

_Monique Thatcher trembled on-screen. _The Gundam Force failed Neotopia on the containment of Commander Sazabi. You admitted it yourself. By allowing the Commander to co-exist among us without punishment, alive, Neotopia was invaded once again.”__

_“T_ _his _was hardly an invasi—”__

 _“My daughter’s best friend is dead!”_  Thatcher surged forward and slapped her hands down on the table  _hard_. It was a bold move, emphasized by the way the Axian immediately shrank back in his seat.  _“Crushed and trapped inside her own burning car when one of your friends decided to come crashing on top of her! It would have never happened if we simply punished Sazabi the way we should have. We cannot have any ties to the Dark Axis remaining on our colony if we are to survive!”_

She leaned further forward. TA-N90 shook.

 _“That includes_ _you.”_

TA-N90 stood up with lightning speed, yanking backwards and sending his chair tumbling. He thrashed. White hot desperation shuddered free in his posture as he wrenched away from that awful woman. Thatcher retreated in terror, a coward even when she was the one with the advantage. She threw herself to the floor and crawled to the one-way window on hands and knees.

Mayor Margaret Gathermoon cringed. “You can turn it off now. I think I’ve seen enough...”

“You don’t want to see the part where he starts crying?” Omar Bellwood leaned back in his roller, fiddling with a large fire scorched bolt. He tossed it up into the air and caught it repeatedly. He looked bored. “Personally, the big ugly seizure is my favorite bit. That guy’s brain was  _scrambled._ It took fifteen hours to run a defrag and I’m still not sure we completely fixed him.”

Kao Lyn turned around, looking at the boy. “What is that?”

“This?” Bellwood’s demeanor changed, impasse to nervous. He sat up, looking at the large bolt in his hand. “Uuh... the Commander’s? Hey look, you asked  _me_ to come out here with you guys, I was in the middle of cataloguing and didn’t have time to set it down—”

Kao Lyn’s voice had no energy or mirth to it, like it usually did. He pointed out the door. “Put it back.”

Bellwood retreated out the door with his tail between his legs.

Down by one, the three of them sat at the conference table with the monitor continuing to show its playback. Mayor Margaret could no longer look at it, instead averting her eyes to watch Bellwood leave. “Was it necessary to be so rough with him? I’m sure that poor boy is spread thin as can be, between the dimensional transport and the Commander. How...?”

“Sazabi is doing poorly.” Kao Lyn turned the volume down on the screen with a remote. There was a tremor in his hand. Gathermoon recognized it all too well.

She had been in office for less than a week when she first learned about the SDG. The previous mayor was kind enough to go with her to Blanc Base to meet Chief Haro. A week after that, she got a call on her emergency line: a Gundam thrown from an alternate dimension was warning about invaders. She never got to meet Zero before he dissapeared from containment, but was secretly glad. She dreaded ever having to ask him about the robots that attacked his home. She prayed those creatures would never be at Neotopia’s doorstep. She had many sleepless nights as mayor once she got That Phone Call two years later. A GM peace officer and his Ball deputy had been shot on a Saturday afternoon. The Dark Axis had arrived. The monsters had arrived.

On the screen, officers in riot gear stormed the room. TA-N90 unhinged a secret jawline and let out a piercing  _scream_. The volume was turned almost all the way down and was still too loud, still made Margaret’s skin crawl. He cowered in the corner, brandishing his table leg like a lifeline but shaking too hard to use it.

The short-haired woman from the interview before, in a white tank top, rushed in and tried to shove past the officers. Her face was censored by a large black square, rather than the usual blur effect.

“Renee Clarke? Why...?”

“Yes, and the eyepatch stood out too much.” Juli Petrov leaned back in her seat, sipping on her coffee. She still looked disturbed, but significantly more nonpulsed at the same time. As head of communications, she must have seen this footage more than fifty times. Even with the regular blur, she was still potentially identifiable.

“The Axian is with her now?”

 _“Tango_  is with her, yes. They’re in the District 8 safehouse.” Kao Lyn didn’t look away from the screen. He winced. Margret did too, when the Axian - Tango - started twitching rhythmically on his feet. His optic rolled back. The table leg fell from his hands as he started to seize in place. The low charge EMP he had been enduring was finally affecting his motor-center, triggered by stress. It was ugly and frightening. Renee howled. Chief Haro burst in and immediately began shouting orders.

When Tango finally collapsed, he slid slowly down the wall and lay in a crumpled heap. The static at the corners finally cut away as the EMP was turned off.

When Chief Haro carried Tango out, and security escorted Thatcher away, the footage cut and Juli cleared her throat. “That’s the cut we gave the Personhood Preservation Society. They have a few more days to post this version of the footage to their online servers before the we upload it ourselves.”

“They won’t,” Margret said. The screen turned blue as the media file stopped in its entirety, and relief surged through her. “That was horrible.”

Kao Lyn glanced at her. Even behind those spectacles, she saw stone cold  _anger. “Isn’t it?”_

Juli plucked the remote up from the center of the table and switched it to the news. As expected, her own face was on the screen. Outlets hadn’t stopped showing footage from the press conference Juli made the day before. The headline read COMMANDER SAZABI IN CRITICAL CONDITION. It changed to SURVIVING DOGA AXIAN UNDER HOUSE ARREST IN CITY.

 _“At this time_ _, the PPSN has refused to comment on the validity of Monique Thatcher’s claims that the Axian she interrogated broke her arm_   _. No footage of the event has made its way onto the Society’s website. The only correspondence so far has been from Thatcher’s attorney. Attorney David Freidman says that they will challenge to suppress the footage’s publication on the grounds of causing Mrs. Thatcher emotional distress—”_

“Oh, we already beat that. Judge Salazar shot them down an hour ago.” Juli looked smug. “Thatcher’s attorney couldn’t provide our lawyer  _or_ the judge with an x-ray. She brought a picture into court but it was inadmissible. Printing a picture off the internet and not bringing in radiology film  _or_ a doctor’s name didn’t impress anyone.”

Kao Lyn was still eerily quiet. The man wasn’t looking at anyone. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.

“Juli,” he said. “Would you mind checking on Bellwood? I’m worried I was too rough on him. He puts up a bravado, but...”

“Of course.” Juli stood up, then shot Mayor Margret a look.

She knew she was in for it.

Once Juli was gone, Kao Lyn turned his head to look at her. He waited. She felt like she was on trial.

“Where is Chief Haro?” she asked. Praying to delay the inevitable.

“With his family. Helping to fix his house.” Kao Lyn kept staring.

“That’s right. You and Juli know his real identity...” Shielded by the conference table, she wrung her hands out of sight. She wanted to sink into the floor and out of sight from his withering gaze. “No one was seriously hurt, were they?”

Kao Lyn took off his glasses. He had the fiercest green eyes she had ever seen on another human being. “His wife and daughter almost died.”

Margret thought about Keiko Ray, and how her daughter Nanako had been kidnapped by that horrible red Zako. She wondered how she felt watching her daughter dissapear in the sky with Commander Sazabi giving chase. What had been Markus Ray’s reaction when  _he_ heard the news? If Chief Haro had a spouse and daughter like Mark, how much pain were they in knowing they almost lost everything.

Kao Lyn picked up the remote. He changed the channel back to the auxilary mode. He hit a button and the security footage pasted itself on the screen once more. The part where the armored security surged in, Tango recoiling in horror and pressing his back to the wall...

“Please don’t.” Margret's mouth was dry.

“I’m going to,” Kao Lyn hissed. He paused the video. The Axian remained frozen in place, looking extremely small compared to all the humans in the room with him. “You wanted this.”

“Robo House would have been nothing of the sort.”

Kao Lyn  _slammed_ his hands down on the table. The glasses bounced. Juli’s drink that she left behind took to the air by mere centimeters and spilled onto the floor. At once, Margret was reminded about who she was speaking to. Chief Haro was genetically modified to be stronger than the average human, but Kao Lyn was the  _original_ heavy hitter of the Super Dimensional Guard. His days as the front runner of the Steel Roses were far behind him, but age couldn’t stop that passion from burning out. His voice was a roar. “You were going to let that happen! To  _all of them,_  if we ever caught more!  _Look_ at him!”

Of course he was still angry about Robo House. He had been angry ever since they started building it, almost three years ago. Kao Lyn was adamantly opposed from conception to execution. Reprogramming was deemed inhumane in Neotopia for the purpose of full-reformatting, but the Dark Axis threat called for drastic measures. Her office was tasked to make that emergency determination, that reprogramming for the sake of curbing untold violence was  _necessary_. An evil in all other circumstances, but Robo House was going to  _help_  the Axians! Make them peaceful members of their happy community, make them spare Neotopia in the way that Lacroa wasn’t...

Robo House only had three Axian patients in the wake of the original June invasion. All three were critical failures and  _then_ some. Zapper Zaku flip-flopped between janitorial duties and attacking the Gundam Force on the  _Gundamusai_. Commander Sazabi flat out resisted all forms of passive reprogramming. Doga Yellow simply faked his— and then tried to kill himself, recently. They had all been heavy hitters in the Dark Axis. One more than the other two, but Tango was a grunt. The screencapped fear in his face spoke volumes.

“Robo House wasn’t this,” Margaret tried to say. Her voice was a whispered shadow of itself. “It wasn’t...”

Kao Lyn left. He put his glasses back on and shoved out of the room past Juli as she returned, bringing Bellwood in tow. The usually confident, albeit cocky teenager had visible red rings in his eyes. Juli looked tired too, now that she was seeing things unfiltered. Tango’s image on the screen was trapped in that moment in time, straight into the abyss. For a moment Margaret imagined him in a white walled room surrounded by doctors, but the Axian stayed locked in that frightened pose.

The mayor of Neotopia buried her face in her hands.

**viii**

“I got a different kind job for you,” Cooper said, and he looked _extremely_ guilty. He hesitated walking up to her, hesitated a second time before he handed her a thick folder with paperwork. He then walked with her into the junkyard. It had high concrete fence all around the perimeter to keep people from seeing in, from ruining the cute aesthetic of the neighborhood. More than than thirty of the total loss vehicles were lined up neatly, if you could even call them that anymore. Twisted, burnt heaps of cars in various levels of destruction were laid out. The one marked COLLINS, BETHANY was among them.

“Oh no…” 

“City officials brought most of these in, but some were from clients hoping we could…” Cooper shook his head. “Everyone needs to be contacted so they can get their insurance to cover the credit approval for new cars. These ones are totalled.”

“Why me?” Renee already knew why.

“Not all these cars were _empty_ when they were recovered,” Cooper said. He flinched at his own words. “You’re… better at talking to people. Sorry, Renee.”

Three phone calls in, and she was regretting walking into work that day. It was worse than her encounter with Molly. The first call was regarding one of the cars gnarled beyond belief, torn nearly in half from being t-boned at high speed. The woman who owned it had been driving her kids to a bowling alley birthday party when the Doga Bombers came down. She barely had enough time to get out before an Axian slammed into her truck bed, flipping it backwards through the air into a power pylon. Her oldest son got out, but the youngest tried to double back for a stuffed animal. He was in a coma. The second and third were similar, where parents of driving high school students were leaving different sports meets. One minute they were driving home, the next they found themselves swerving to avoid doga bombers and fleeing civilians alike. One slapped on the emergency brake and scrambled out the door before another car slammed into it from behind, smashing it like an accordion. She broke her leg. The other teen swerved and drove into a man-made lake by the Peace Park condos. The car’s mechanics were flooded and incapable of being saved. The girl almost drowned.

The fourth phone call was made to Bethany Collins’ cell phone. It was answered by a masculine sounding GM. Renee recognized the codec immediately. You didn’t forget a voice like the mayor’s butler, Leonardo.

“Yes, this is Bethany’s number. Her calls are currently being forwarded to her older brother, Prio Collins. He is unable to come to the phone right now,” Leonardo said. “Is this regarding the cream colored Teiwaz Barbatos?”

“I’m afraid so…” Renee leaned back in her chair, looking at the paperwork. “The frame is structurally unviable. At this time, _Al’s_ is unable to repair the damage. We’ll forward you the credits direct from your insurance company to replace it as soon as next—”

“Please, keep the credits. Use them to help your other customers. Destroy the Barbatos as soon as you are able.”

Renee was caught off guard. On one hand, it was already was. Charred and crushed beyond recognition, even after the roof had been ripped off. Crisp cuts from jaws-of-life scarred the surface, scraping away the fire damage. But to revoke getting the points to get a new car...? “Why?”

“Unfortunately, the car was a birthday present for Bethany. She was in the driver’s seat when a doga bomber came down on top of it. She passed away and the family has no use for another vehicle.” Leonardo’s voice was grave. “However, we understand that someone else may be in a position where they need a new car right away. Delays across the city for insurance claims are rampant. Please, pass the voucher to someone who will be able to benefit from it.”

He gave her his ID number and she ran it through her system. Sure enough, while Prio Collins was listed as the secondary car owner, Leonardo Collins was listed as the spouse. He was able to make the decision to decline the insurance. Renee gave him a reference number and the procedure to get the insurance if they changed their minds.

“We will not, but I thank you regardless. You all must be very busy. From the mayor’s office to you, we cannot give enough thanks for all the hard work our public servants have extended.” Leonardo paused. “I do have one last question, if that is alright.”

“Of course, Leonardo.”

“Bethany was wearing an antique amethyst bangle. It was a family heirloom all the way from Earth. Her family last saw her wearing it when she went out shopping with a friend. I know Al, and I know he would have said something during the initial inspection of the car if it was found. She wasn’t wearing it when they brought her to the _hospital...”_ Leonardo stopped. His voice shook on the last word. He was getting emotional. “Please, take one last look before you recycle the wreckage. You do not have to call back if it’s not found, but we would deeply appreciate it.”

Renee felt her heart hurt. “I’ll make sure Al sets it aside. We’ll take the whole thing apart piece by piece rather than throw it in the compactor. You have my word.”

“Bless you, miss. Thank you so much.”

Renee hung up the phone, marked the paperwork to write the car off as a total loss.

It wasn’t until ten calls later, listening to the horrible stories about that night when the dogas fell, that she remembered something. Molly’s reaction to Bethany’s car. Also, she had been wearing a purple bracelet.

**ix**

_“_ _You_ _’_ _re right,_ _”_ Molly said. Her voice was flat. _“_ _We don_ _’_ _t know enough about the enemy._ _”_

Enemy.

All throughout the drive back to the safehouse, what Molly said ate at her. Bad enough that the woman had to be so weird while she was at work and obligated to be _nice_ , but the rest of the day grated on her too. The phone calls. Working on more cars than she had expected to. They never did find the amethyst cuff in the Barbatos, either. She wanted to call Leonardo back and ask if he knew a Molly Thatcher, but it was too weird of a coincidence. There was no way, right? Even then, when she accidentally misdialed him twenty minutes later, the phone registered as disconnected. Prio must have decided he was tired of filtering his dead sister’s friends asking if she was okay. According to the citywide obituary site, she had been buried a few days earlier.

Renee pulled into the driveway of the Metonomy Lane house, gently rolling down the driveway. As urgent as she had been to leave, she was _very_ glad to be back. It wasn’t a nice day at the garage.

(Weird. Hadn’t her brother threatened to stop by? Was he just that much of a dick, or had her mother told him off? Whatever.)

(You’re glad that your brother didn’t stop by, and you’re glad to be back at this house with an Axian lurking inside? Really?)

(enemy enemy enemy)

She never usually let badmouthing get to her, but despite how tired she was, she stayed sitting in the car. The engine on the truck was still giving her problems, so she usually let it idle to give it a proper cooldown... but she could have gone inside to get a drink first, or even change her shirt. Instead, she stayed put, caught herself doing the thousand yard stare straight at the front door. _Tango_ was in the house somewhere, if he hadn’t just wandered off... no, she would have heard about it, if she did. The SDG had a tracking device on him and she would have gotten a call from someone if he was gone. She dug through her purse to look for her cell phone. No texts or missed calls. Not even from Tango.

Her petrification medical card fell out of her wallet onto the passenger side floor. She swore and leaned over to get it. The plastic felt heavy in her hand, reflected orange sunbeams.

Everyone who was petrified in June was asked to register with their doctor for a special ID card. They were also asked to see specialists and have an examination. Renee had been one of them. While a government mandated medical hospital visit seemed a little extreme, no one who was stung was going to argue it. No one actually _knew_ how the petrification process worked, or how the “white” bagu bagu swarms were able to just... _reverse_ it. Researchers had no way to explain it. _Everyone_ should have died after being stung, and hundred people _had_. The normal bagu bagu stung everyone trying to evacuate the city, and the white ones completely ignored a handful. Scientists seemed to think it was because the statues were damaged. Renee was really glad she caught herself on that pole when she had stung, otherwise her statue would have slammed into the pavement and shattered...

While most everyone returned to normal, fears lingered about the effects of being turned into a statue for several hours. The fears were well deserved. In less than two weeks, there were fifty reported cases of childhood arthritis from petrification victims under ten. After a month, thousands of people were complaining about joint pain with symptoms matching tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis. In two months, everyone was sore and seeking relief.

Her arm where she was stung twinged. Just _looking_ at the card was making her ache.

_Enemy._

(Tango is an enemy.)

(No. He couldn’t be. He’s an Axian, but he’s not...)

(But he is. Don’t forget why he came here with all the others.)

Renee leaned back into her seat and gripped the card in her fist. She took account of every creak in her joints and exhaled, trying to figure out which ones were from fatigue and which ones she should worry about. Her tailbone ached, hopefully from sitting on her ass pushing out dents by hand. Her back was sore, probably because she was on her back on the concrete while working on people’s steering axles. Her neck ached— and no, she couldn’t think of a particular reason.

She shoved the card back into her purse.

(He’s not an enemy, he’s not an enemy...)

(They all came here for a reason. _He_ came here for a reason. He wanted to destroy _you_.)

Renee put her purse over her shoulder. This ugly imaginary conversation was bothering her worse than Molly ever had. She couldn’t take it anymore. She got out of the truck, fumbled to lock it, and walked up to the house. It took a minute of confusedly messing with the lock for her to remember she hadn’t turned the deadbolt that morning. She had just locked herself out.

“Hope no one walked in off the street,” Renee said, and then realized how stupid that was. Yeah. She _definitely_ would have heard about it, if burglars tried to get in.

She stepped inside.

“Tango? I’m back...”  _Fuck_ , she sounded deflated. Shitty day took no prisoners.

Silence.

That... wasn’t good. Renee hesitated in the doorway and didn’t dare step further into the house. The setting sun was hitting the windows in just the right spot to send dark orange color washing through the foyer. Striking shadows cut over bare walls, plunged the hardwood into darkness. Birds called behind her but not a sound came out of the house. No idling engine. No heavy metal footfalls.

“Tango...?”

Where _was_ he?

Renee held her breath and finally ushered the courage to cross the threshold. As a precaution, she kept the door open behind her. She put down her purse on the entryway table hugging the staircase, but made sure to keep her car keys and phone in hand. She moved further into the house and held her breath. “Tango? Ta—?”

The dining room was empty. The kitchen was abandoned.

She rounded the corner into the living room...

Oh.

For an _enemy_ , Tango certainly struggled to fit into the role... in fact, he struggled to fit into the lampshade pressed over his face. The only thing he hadn’t struggled with was getting his entire head wedged in there as far as it would go. How the hell had he even _accomplished_ that? The Axian was standing sadly in the corner with his back to the wall, the bare light stand sitting haphazardly up a few feet away from him. He had long since unplugged it from the wall. The electric fireplace was on, providing even more orange light.

“Oh my god.” Renee put her hand on her mouth. _“Tango?”_

Tango _had_ to have head her come in, and there was no way he didn't hear her _now_. He was awake, if the sound of his body was any indication. The telltale electric buzz of a conscious robot was easy for her to discern. Slowly, he turned his head in her direction. The flash of his optic illuminated behind the shade fabric as a pink beacon.

 _“_ _Help._ _”_ He shuffled on his pedes.

It looked like they _both_ had a rough day.

Renee couldn’t help herself, though. After everything with Molly, after all of her insecurities surrounding him, he had... managed to do _this_. The absolute cusp of being the least threatening situation the Axian could put himself in. Renee put down her keys and phone, trying to stifle a chuckle. “Oh my god. Tee— how did this happen?”

(Since when was he Tee?)

Tango whined. He either didn’t notice the nickname or elected to ignore it. “I was examining the light fixture. I thought it was strange to have a filter over the light when humans prefer their spaces as brightly lit as possible. I attempted to remove it and— I am _sorry._ _”_

Sorry? Did he think she was _mad_ at him?

“Don’t be sorry! It’s just... oh my god. It’s _funny._ How long were you like this?”

Tango didn’t miss a beat. “Eight hours and fifty-three minutes.”

 _“What?”_ It suddenly wasn’t so funny anymore. Her stomach turned over. “Tango, that’s practically all day! You should have texted me!”

The Axian shuffled again. He turned his head away from her. “I did not want to disturb you, or access your phone without permission a second time.”

Renee remembered their conversation the night before, and how it had ended on that note. She realized that he had fixated on it, and rather than call to ask for help he just _stayed_ there. She immediately moved to investigate the lampshade, struggling to force her guilt back down. She had to focus on getting him out before she started feeling sorry for either of them. “Need a hand?”

(ENEMY!)

“Oh piss off!”

“What?” Tango’s voice was _very_ small. The glow of that optic swung around to look at her behind the fabric.

“Oh buddy, not you! I mean the shade.” Renee hesitated before running her fingers along the wire rim. It was definitely caught on his helmet, where his mask met the rest of his torpedo shaped head. “You _really_ wedged yourself in there good... need a hand?”

“I have two already, thank you. But if you can help get this off of me...”

Renee had him move to the center of the room where she could have more room to work. She took him by the hand and led him gently, careful not to let him bump into anything. Even though the lampshade had the top portion open, the mech’s… guard plate? Whatever it was, it blocked his field of vision. His engine whined when she reached up around his head to try and slip her fingers under the rim over his head to stretch it open. It didn’t work. She couldn’t wedge _anything_ under there.

“Hell,” she swore. “It’s _really_ stuck…”

Tango whined louder. It was the most despondent kind of sound she had ever heard out of a mecha. _“_ _I know._ _”_

“Hold on, let’s try _this...”_ She lifted her leg and put her boot on his thigh, bracing herself. “Stand still and pull your head back when I say go, okay?” 

“Okay…”

She shoved her hand through the fabric, ripping it easily. She hooked her hand around the top rim of the shade closest to her. Tango _choked_ , horrified. She gripped the shade and adjusted the placement of her shoe. “Go!”

She pulled. Tango yanked his head back and nearly flung her across the room. Renee screamed, caught herself on her feet before she could plant her face into the floor. Tango whirled around to try and find her. The holes in the shade weren’t wide enough for him to completely see out of. “Human!?”

“Okay, new plan! You stand still and _I_ pull…”

They reset and retook their positions. Renee started to pull. Occasionally she tried to turn her hands as if she were steering the wheel of a car, hoping the wire frame would damage itself. Tango braced himself and tried to stand as still as possible, moving only when she exerted more force and the Axian was caught unaware. She kept working the frame, weakening the metal as much as possible—

Something inside the shade snapped. There was a scraping sound.

The doga bomber squeaked. “Ow. Ow. _Ow_. _Ow! Owowowowow!_ ”

Renee braced herself and _yanked_.

_POP!_

The fabric of the lampshade ripped at the base, and the metal brackets that held it together collapsed under the strain of her handling. The snapped frame dragged along Tango’s head with a hideous scraping sound. The shade came off and Renee screamed as inertia pushed her backwards with the same force—

She landed on her ass, then on her back, hitting her head on the floor. The shade was a mangled wreck in her hands. 

 _“_ _Shit!_ _”_

Tango staggered backwards. The Axian bumped into the wall behind him and let out another pitiful squeak. He shook his head, reached up to swipe his hands over the top of his helmet as if to make sure the offending lampshade was really gone. He looked up and shuttered his optic rapidly. The aperture in the lens blinked out the light each time. He turned his head and saw her on the floor.

“Renee!” He stepped forward— then stopped short. His hands shook as he kept them suspended in front of him. “Are you damaged!?”

“Ah, define _damaged,”_ she joked halfheartedly, finally starting to sit up. The room spun from whacking her head like that. She stopped herself before she could lean all the way forward. Falling like that had hurt more than it needed to. The joints in her fingers _especially_ hurt, and the shoulder on her arm where the was stung… she could barely move.

Tango was none the wiser. The mech whined loudly again, finally stepping forward to reach out and ease her up. His hand touched her shoulder

Pain.

Renee hissed. Without meaning to, slapped his hand away. Hard. It wasn’t until he retreated all the way to the opposite side of the room, in the corner, where she first found him that she realized what she did. Tango’s optic was flared and was locked in on her

Renee clutched at her shoulder and sputtered. “Tango, I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry. I mean, my shoulder...”

Tango was trying to push himself further into the wall. That terrified optic didn’t move off of her. They stared at each other in silence. Renee had no idea what to say. She had never seen him _look_ at her that way before, but the expression was still somehow familiar. That was when she remembered the interrogation room. After Thatcher set him off. After the armed officers stormed the room and…

She was going to see the security bolt in action, she thought. He was going to scream at her, and then he was going to _attack_.

A minute went by. It never happened. At first she thought he locked down on the spot, but finally he started moving again. The doga bomber slumped against the wall and sat on the floor. He was already short, so seeing him on the ground made him even _smaller_. Zako height, maybe less. He turned his head down and didn’t look at her. A deep, silver scratch ran the length of his helmet where the shade broke and dug into the paint.

“Tango? Ooh, Tee, I’m so sorry. Let me go get my buffing kit—”

“Do you hate me?”

She almost didn’t hear him. Outside, a bird called. Kids riding bikes loudly went past, dinging bells and talking about something she couldn’t make out. Her blood was rushing in her ears. “What? Tango, of course not…” 

She knew what word vomit felt like. When she was nervous or upset at something, she tended to ramble on and on unless someone stopped her. The last time she saw her family at the barbecue before the invasion, she had gotten into a fight with her brother and sister. She started yelling at them and couldn’t stop. Tango wasn’t yelling, but his codec shook and there was no stopping him once he started. He let go. His voice was a choked whine. “Ever since we got here, you have repeatedly disengaged me. Your behavior is different from the interrogation room. You were willing to speak with me and treated me nicely. You’re still _nice_ but you don’t— you’re not happy to be assigned as my custodian. I’m sorry. I…”

This had nothing to do with being afraid of the repercussions for breaking the lamp, or even the slap. Renee felt her chest knot. Guilt. She made to stand, felt her insides twist even further when she saw him cower…

(Enemy…)

_(Fuck off, you dumb bitch.)_

Renee quietly crawled to where she put her phone down. She opened texting, highlighted Tango’s contact, and shot him a text.

 **RENEE:** I don’t hate you, Tango. I’m your friend.

The Axian froze. His optic turned up on its dark track to look at her.

She sent another message.                

 **RENEE:** Can I sit next to you?

He said nothing. Then, before she could try again, her phone dinged

 **TANGO:** yes

She shuffled across the room towards him. Outside, twilight lingered. The room was getting dark, minus the light from the fireplace still flickering. It cast faint wisps of light across the hardwood. It occurred to her once she was within arm’s length of the Axian that she had never been _this_ close to him before. Standing behind him when he was having a panic attack in the interrogation room was one thing. Sitting next to him when he was slumped over unconscious when the EMP was turned off was another. They were near without necessarily being _close,_ especially with other people were around. Now she was alone. She sat next to Tango, leaning forward so she didn’t bump into a wingtip. His optic was close enough to her head to see the pathway it ran on inside his head. It was a gyro track that probably doubled as a sensor to let him orient himself. Up close she could see the other scratches in his armor, from being a soldier and fighting for the Dark—

 _“_ _I’m_ sorry,” Renee said. Would that show him that she was being non-confrontational? Whatever it meant, Tango immediately seemed to loosen up. “You’re right. You’re a hundred percent right, Tee. I haven’t treated you the same since we both got here, and that’s not fair to you. Before I was with other humans as backup, but now…

“You are alone with me.” Tango’s optic dimmed. “I scare you.”

“You shouldn’t, though. I _shouldn’t_ be scared of you.” Renee thought about Al, how people used to treat _him_. “You’re still the same person who opened up to me at Blanc Base. You’re quiet and sweet— _you’re_ the nice one. You haven’t changed. _I_ was the one who let my hang-ups get in the way. I haven’t afforded you the same treatment since we got here and it wasn’t fair to you at all. It wont happen again.”

They sat in silence for awhile longer. It got darker. Finally there was no more light coming through the windows. Crickets and peepers called from outside, the sound creeping in through the walls and filling the house with their calls. The only way Renee could see more than a foot in front of her was by the light of the fireplace and the glow of Tango’s optic.

“You’re not angry about the lamp?”

“To be honest, I thought that shade was kind of ugly. I think you did it a favor by putting it out of its misery.”

The doga bomber snorted. A hard engine rev and air forced out his chest vents in a heavy sputter.

“Want to start over?”

“Start over…?”

“Like this.” She cleared her throat. “Hi! I’m Renee! What’s your name?”

Tango considered this. Finally, he rumbled. A low RPM that rolled his pistons. Was he trying to simulate clearing his throat, too?

“I am a Dark Axis generation eight Doga Bomber, fabrication ID: TA-N90.”

Renee grinned. “Mind if I call you Tango?”

“No. Not at all.”

That lamp never actually got a replacement shade. 

 **x**  

After she took a shower, she knocked on Tango’s door. He opened it without answering.

She smiled at him. “Want to watch TV with me?”

The rule was thrown out the door about her bedroom. Tango was still hesitant to go in, pausing in the doorway before she insisted it was fine.

“I thought you said…?”

“Eeh, our housemate constitution can have some amendments,” she admitted. “Besides, I’ve been in your room while you were in it. So… I guess whenever I’m here, so long as you knock first, you can come and go as you like.

She wondered if he knew what a constitution was, or if he knew not to knock on the door too hard. She briefly imagined his fist coming straight through— and him being _stuck_. Again. Not that replacing a door would be that difficult, but the best messes were the ones you never had to clean up in the first place. Tango crossed the threshold tentatively. Caution aided his steps further in. Getting him to sit on the bed with her was rewarded with encouraging words and…

The second he was on it, his optic flared. “This is… comfortable.”

“That’s right, you _stand_ to sleep…”

“Yes…” he reclined, lingering on the word. The pillows deflated under his weight but he didn’t seem to mind. She grinned watching the doga bomber get comfy. The more she watched him, she realized Axians were… sort of like reverse owls. Owls could rotate their heads but their eyes were stationary. Axians could move their heads, but not as drastically as they could swing around that searching optic. She grabbed the TV remote and flipped to the first channel.

Tango’s optic blazed pink and snapped in the direction of the monitor. The lens even seemed to recoil. “What _is_ this?”

“No cable in the Dark Axis?”

“No! I don’t even know what that means!” He leaned forward. She had turned it onto one of the colony’s reality channels. It was late enough in the evening to show less kid friendly shows, which Renee was bummed at. She figured Tango wouldn’t mind watching the _Stop Bots_ reboot. The current program was one of those wedding dress hunting shows. Renee couldn’t remember the name. Tango was absolutely enamored. “This is prerecorded?”

“Yeah! We make these shows to entertain each other.”

Tango’s head tilted again. And again. Back and forth, and Renee had to resist the urge to laugh. She had never seen anyone so _honed in_ on something. “There are more?”

Renee began channel flipping. She landed on an old episode of the _Trashland_ comic adaptation. “Lots.”

They were three hours into channel hopping when she realized what time it was. When the current episode of _Cool Houses_ ended, she nudged Tango gently. “Alright, bedtime for me. I have to go to work again tomorrow.”

“Oh!” Tango stood up and left. Renee tried to stop him— she hadn’t meant to kick him out immediately! Before she could follow, he came back. Her jacket was clenched in his hand. “You may want this?”

“Hey, sweet! I’d forgotten all about it!” Considering it was her favorite jacket, _that_ was a first. She took it back and turned it over in her own hands. “Thank you… I accidentally left it behind this morning. Brings back memories, huh?”

“I was glad you left it.” Tango shuffled. “I… knew it was an indication you would be back.”

That was depressing. Renee felt her heart wrench. “Tee, you don’t have to worry. I’ll always come back for you, okay?”

“You said it again.” The doga bomber tilted his head. “Tee. What does…?”

“Oh, sorry! I started using that as a nickname without asking you if that was okay first. I’m so sorry!” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Sometimes when you’re friends with someone, you use a different name to be affectionate!”

“I like it, but I don’t have one for you…”

Renee giggled. “I’ve been kind of liking human, so far. It’s cute, coming from you.”

“Will you be gone in the morning immediately…?”

“Well, how about this— if I leave early, I can come back early. We can watch more TV if you like.” She paused. “You haven’t been outside yet, have you? Maybe we can hang out in the yard a little.”

“Preferably at dusk or night. The sun is… bright.”

“Well yeah, it’s a _sun._ _”_

Tango revved quietly. When it was clear the conversation had ended, he backed himself out. “I will go back to my room. Do you want me to…?”

“You can leave the door open, if you want,” Renee smiled. “Goodnight, Tee.”

He flashed his optic at her “Goodnight, human.”

For the first time in that house, Renee got a full night’s sleep.

**x**

**June 16th, N.C. 286**

 

For some reason, she wasn’t utterly terrified.

In the darkness of the UC Mart, the robot that entered looked almost black. Its silhouette was outlined by the streetlamp, shrouding the store in temporary darkness As it finished stepping over the door and treaded across crunching glass, Renee could see that it was mostly brown and yellow. Base factory primer colors, nothing fancy. It was bipedal but that was the only similarity it shared with GMs. A piercing pink optic swung wide inside the dark cavern in its face. It pushed further into the store. The wings of the machine barely cleared the last aisle as he started to walk down. It was a perfect vantage point for Renee to see the gun it was holding.

At the end of the next aisle, Lawyer and Atlus Pin looked back at her with wide eyes.

Renee waved to them rapidly. _Move! It’s coming your way!_

The two of them quickly – quietly – moved from the end display they were behind into the next aisle. The armed robot made it to the end of the aisle, swung that optic wide again, and rounded the corner. He stepped right past where Lawyer and Atlus Pin had been seconds earlier. Now they were in the next aisle, looking back at Renee again. Renee ducked around the corner when the robot had her in its line of sight.

The marching footfalls stopped.

“What’s it doing?” Gerald asked. The question was mouthed, no sound coming out.

Renee shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The footfalls resumed. Closer than ever. The counter groaned. She looked straight up. The robot was leaning over the cashier’s table to peer at the back shelves, scanning the products. Vapes, painkillers, and those discreet packages. Its optic swung wide again to scan all the items. Renee pressed herself as close to the counter as she could to stay out of its line of sight. Isabella and Gerald followed suit. The grandson’s knuckles were white against his grandfather and the dog stuffed animal.

It pulled away. The counter heaved as it stopped leaning against it. It was walking away.

Renee chanced another look around the corner when her heart stopped beating in her ears. The robot was halfway the next aisle. Lawyer and Atlus were staring at her in horror. She waved at them again to move, but then threw her hands up to make them _stop._ She barely had half a second to go back around the corner when the robot stopped midway down the aisle and turned around. No footfalls. Renee risked another peek. Now the robot was poking at a container of fudge cookies on the shelf. The gun was dangling at its side.

Renee’s terror dissipated.

It didn’t make sense not to feel anything other than absolute fear. There was an armed alien in the store, part of a larger invasion party that was attacking the city. But the longer the watched the robot, the more confident she was that it wasn’t looking for _them_.

Someone reached out and touched her arm. The soft hand, accented with manicured nails, made Isabella’s unspoken question real. _What’s going on?_

“I think it’s just… exploring.”

The robot was still searching the shelves. Having decided the cookies weren’t interesting enough to continue probing. It plucked up a muffin package and turned it over in its servo. She had been expecting it to be clawed just by the look of it, but their hands were surprisingly standard. Thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky—

The scream of twin turbines, followed by a rough landing. The ground shook. Renee barely snapped herself around the corner again when a new shadow cast itself over the store. There was the sound of a startled engine rev, followed by shaking footfalls as another robot entered the store. Larger than the first one. _Way_ larger. Its – his – voice carried like a gunshot.

“Dude, _snacks!”_  He revved so loudly, Renee felt the air get sucked out of her lungs. “Humans have the best garbage, man!”

Isabella’s eyes were wider than they had ever been. She mouthed, _“_ _Holy fuck.”_

This alien was far more animated, and eerily personable. The newest robot audibly marched across the store, and Renee was initially horrified that he was going to come behind the counter. Instead, he went straight for the slurpee machine. She turned her head just as he reached it, standing almost a foot and a half taller than the first robot. They were identical in appearance minus the size difference and color. This flying robot was blue with dark grey, accented with splashes of red. It shook the machine excitedly, feeling for one of the dispenser levers—

Razzberry Sour poured from the spout.

The robot cackled and shoved his entire head underneath. A hidden jaw _unhinged_ like a snake, catching the fluid in its maw.

Renee glanced around the corner to make sure everyone else was okay. She could see the outline of Skateboard crammed behind the machine, curled up perfectly still. Beyond the blue robot, Atlus Pin and Lawyer had gone back to cowering behind one of the aisles. Their eyes were practically bugging. Lawyer was frantically waving _her_ back now. Glasses was still cowering in the corner, and the first robot was standing firm at attention at—

The purple robot that she hadn’t seen crossed the threshold into the store. Renee flung herself around the corner and prayed it hadn’t seen her.

Judging by the looks of terror that she could see on everyone’s face from her vantage point, they were as shocked as she was. No one was expecting them to… speak.

The purple robot stopped walking. It’s voice was a menacing rumble. “What are you _doing?_ _”_

“Uuuh, fuelling on rations?” Blue pulled away from the machine, relocking his jaw. “Try this, dude! They got your color and everything, Violent! Nothing for No Name and Darktide, though… guess they’re not as cool as us, huh?”

“The Professor will _hate_ that.”

“Yeah, well, like. I hate him too! I guess! Hey grunt, toss me one of those baggies, it smells fraggin’ _awesome_ _—”_

There was the sound of a radio buzz. A third voice echoed in the UC Mart. _“_ _Navy. Violent. Report._ _”_

Blue – Navy – cackled like a hyena. There was the sound of plastic being ripped open. Renee could smell pungent beef jerky. “Darktide! Aren’t you supposed to be babysitting Zako Red, dude? Aren’t you afraid your new boyfriend’s gonna, like, nail you for emotionally cheating?”

 _“_ _First of all you’re an idiot, and second of all_ _—_ _not relevant. We have a problem. The Gundams are mobile._ _”_ The new player to the game, Darktide, must have had a bad connection. His voice was gravely, or maybe that was just how he sounded. _“_ _Yellow is the only one in the air guarding the Re-Equip Ring. That is what the Gundams are after. You two are to intercept with your rosters.”_

“You could have given us the order via the Newtype Network,” Violent said. The purple robot had a strange tone under the surface of his voice. “What’s going on?”

 _“_ _Zako Red does not need to be privy to this part of the command. The Commander is live on all channels effective immediately,_ _”_ Darktide said. _“_ _I am telling you two, in private, to be careful. I do not want_ _…_ _casualties. These Gundams are dangerous. This isn’t like Voxvale, Nucleus, or Lacroa. Do_ not _let your guard down._ _”_

“You worried about No Name Nemo?” Navy cocked his massive head.

 _“_ _Not just him._ _”_ Darktide revved. _“_ _Get airborne. Play it safe. I want us all to go back to our roost after this is done. That is an order._ _”_

Navy cooed. “Awww. We love you too, Dark.”

“Darktide.” Violent’s voice was stiff.

 _“_ _Yes?”_

“A counter-order for you. Be careful on your end, as well. The Commander is… dangerous.”

 _“_ _I will not fail him._ _”_ The feed cut.

“I just want to force fuel him high-grade, honestly,” Navy said. “Poor bastard.” 

“You heard him. Come on.” Violent audibly turned to to leave. Glass crunched under his pedes as he made his way for the door. Renee could see the way the light in the store changed as he shifted position, the groan of the door as he kicked it out of the way.

“Dude, wait,” Navy faltered. “Should we kill the humans first?”

Ice water shot through her veins like a gunshot. Out from her heard and into her limbs, weighing her down like bricks in a frozen lake. She was so shocked, sinking too fast to get her bearings and get back to the surface for air. It pulsed into her fingertips and back up to her brain with thousands of pinpricks. Renee was numb, felt herself gasp and choke on air in slow motion. She gagged so loud that she startled herself. First when she heard the word kill, second when she heard Asshole – yes, he was Asshole now – start to sob uncontrollably across the store. Of course they had _known_ they were in here. No amount of hiding behind thin chip and snack displays could have saved them.

Violent did not live up to his namesake. “No. The bagu bagu will take care of that. Our ammunition is for the enemy. These are just… meat.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Save the shooting for the Gundams, I get the picture. I hope they put up more of a fight than the last guys. Like Darktide can worry all he wants, but Lacroa was lame. He’s just mad that _Rock_ guy beat him up. Who the frag names themselves _that?_ _”_

Footfalls, and then turbines firing. Asshole was still crying, almost howling at this point. Renee turned around to tell him to shut the fuck up—

The first mech from before was still in the store. At the sharp motion of Renee turning around the corner, her luck at remaining unseen finally ran out. The robot snapped its head to look at her. She froze. They stared at each other.

The mech tilted its head.

Renee reached her hand up. “You…”

The robot flared its optic and recoiled. While the other two robots had known they were in there, this one _hadn’t_. Maybe the bigger ones had better detection suites, or sensors, or whatever the hell it was that they had. Whatever the case, he staggered backwards. It stepped in Lawyer’s briefcase abandoned in the aisle, _jumped,_ and immediately made a run for it. It turned out of the store and left into the night. Its wings accidentally slammed into the door frame and shattered the window on the far wall. Glass shards rained down on top of Glasses, still hiding underneath her coat. She screamed. _Everyone_ screamed.

Renee flung herself around the corner and scrambled to her feet to watch it go. As the robot cleared the sidewalk and sprinted into the street, it took off out of sight. Condensation beaded its armor and cast a shine. The robot’s foot clipped the working street lamp, and the ruined UC mart was finally plunged into total darkness.


End file.
